Learn about Amazon’s Alexa Fund and its expanded investment scope

Why has the Alexa Fund decided to broaden its areas of focus?

We’re seeing unprecedented opportunities for AI to make customers lives better and easier every day, which is central to our mission at Amazon. Both Amazon and Alexa have always been at the forefront of AI, and that’s even more true with the recent launches of Amazon Nova and Alexa+. Amazon Nova represents a new generation of foundation models delivering state-of-the-art intelligence across a wide range of tasks, from natural language understanding to creative content generation; while Alexa+ will transform how people get things done by orchestrating across tens of thousands of services and devices. These are powerful examples of how AI can enhance people’s lives, but we're really just scratching the surface of what's possible.

We believe the most impactful AI innovations are still to come, and that's why we've always been drawn to missionary founders who advance the state-of-the-art. That part of our investment thesis hasn’t changed—but what has changed is the breadth of where we are focused. Some areas we think are really exciting include next-generation assistant experiences with autonomous agents that have specialized expertise and deeper personalization; on-the-go experiences utilizing new sensors and innovative devices beyond smartphone capabilities; emerging AI architectures that will deliver improvements in cost, speed, and accuracy; AI-powered media that enable new-to-world experiences across media types and interaction modes, ; and embodied AI technologies, which have the potential to change how machines interact with the physical world through multimodal perception, advanced reasoning systems, and new sensors.
 

How do you see that coming to life? What have you invested in?

We've always backed companies solving tough tech problems across all levels of the stack—from deep science to practical applications. Our approach to generative AI is a natural extension of our long-standing investment approach. This is clear when you look at our earlier investments that span CTRL Labs, which created a transformative brain-machine interface that picks up neural signals within the body to control devices outside of it with natural gesture, to more recent ones like Osmo, which gives computers a sense of smell by bringing together frontier AI and olfactory science. We also recently invested in four startups that really showcase our expanded scope. These include:

NinjaTech AI is doing remarkable work with its agentic, all-in-one generative AI Assistant that makes everyone more productive—a mission that resonates with us. NinjaTech AI has also partnered with AWS since day one—its entire system runs end-to-end on AWS infrastructure. We're proud investors in their mission to transform how people work and create.

What are some of the ways the Fund and Amazon have been working with these portfolio companies?

In addition to equity capital, we build a close working relationship between portfolio companies and the many Amazon businesses and technologies that could help advance their vision. Our team also opens doors for portfolio companies within Amazon based on the individual company’s situation. This type of assistance can range from early access to otherwise private APIs and SDKs, commercial opportunities with Amazon businesses, participation alongside Amazon at major events, access to senior executives, and more.

Look at NinjaTech AI for instance. It's the perfect example of how the Alexa Fund can act as a valuable resource and channel to collaborate with other organizations within Amazon. Whether it’s their innovative work on AWS Trainium hardware or enabling access to Amazon's Nova family of models to their customers as fast as any developer, our team aims to help spawn creative new integration opportunities through our close relationships with founders and internal teams. The company has leaned into working with Amazon from the beginning of our relationship, and I think there’s a lot more to come that will really benefit our mutual set of customers.

Volley is another example. It started as primarily a voice-gaming Skill builder on Alexa, but through our close relationship with the company, it has now grown to be one of the most successful and innovative voice AI-powered gaming companies. Volley recently broadened its device portfolio to Smart TVs, and we’re really excited about its most recent launch of the game show classic, Jeopardy!, as a full screen native Fire TV application. I think AI has the potential to really transform casual gaming in the home, and we’re excited to partner with Volley on that future.

As we say at Amazon, it’s still Day 1, and our willingness to invest in novel ideals, innovative technologies and exciting companies is as strong as ever.

Paul Bernard leads the Alexa Fund team that identifies and invests in innovative founders advancing the state-of-the-art through venture capital funding. You can learn more about the Amazon Alexa Fund on our website.