Amazon says its AI shopping assistant is gaining traction, with Rufus users up 115%

Earnings // April 30, 2026 Amazon says its AI shopping assistant is gaining traction, with Rufus users up 115% By Allison Smith Ivy Liu Rufus, Amazon’s artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant, is gaining traction, according to the company.

Monthly active users for Rufus are up 115% year over year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on a call with analysts Wednesday after the company reported first-quarter earnings. Meanwhile, user engagement is up 400%, he added. Rufus has “really substantially improved over the last year,” Jassy told analysts.

“We’re aiming to have it be the best shopping assistant anywhere, and I think we’re on that path.” Amazon officially introduced its AI-powered chatbot Rufus in early 2024, and it has since become a prominent part of the e-commerce giant’s retail strategy.

Accessible via a chat bubble icon in Amazon’s mobile app and desktop site, Rufus was initially designed to answer questions like, “Is this jacket machine washable?” or “What should I consider when buying a new laptop?” The company has since beefed up the tool with new capabilities announced in a blog post last week.

For one, Rufus has become more “agentic” — that is, the chatbot is increasingly capable of taking action on a consumer’s behalf. Customers can now ask Rufus to set up recurring shopping tasks, such as restocking household essentials, tracking new product releases or suggesting gift ideas ahead of key occasions.

Last year, Amazon introduced a feature called “Auto Buy” that lets customers use Rufus to automatically purchase products when they reach a set price.

“This is part of an ongoing shift where typical parts of the Amazon customer journey that were not AI-powered, or didn’t previously involve AI interactions, are now increasingly AI-driven, and the AI shopping assistants are playing a bigger role,” said Sky Canaves, a retail analyst at eMarketer.

Rufus was used by 300 million customers in 2025 and helped drive nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales, Amazon previously disclosed when it reported earnings in February. Amazon says customers who use Rufus are 60% more likely to complete a purchase. Amazon began rolling out a new ad format in November called sponsored prompts.

These prompts appear as suggested questions within search results and product pages, and are designed to spark customer conversations with Rufus. For example, a shopper browsing for running shoes might see a prompt asking about a specific brand.

“It’s early, but we’re seeing nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with the brand prompt and Rufus continue the conversation about that brand,” Jassy said on Wednesday’s earnings call. Jassy went on to say that advertising will benefit from AI shopping.

Industry analysts have previously posited that the emergence of agentic commerce, in which consumers shop inside AI chatbots instead of retailers’ sites, could disrupt Amazon’s e-commerce dominance. “With AI interfaces, you tend to find that you’re asking questions. You’re narrowing questions.

It’s asking you questions on what you want, and in that process … there are multiple opportunities to surface relevant products to customers, many of which will be organic and some of which will be sponsored,” Jassy said. “Advertising will do well in a world of agentic commerce.” Advertising is one of Amazon’s fastest-growing businesses.

The bulk of its ad revenue comes from sponsored listings on its web store. Sales from the company’s ad unit surged 24% year over year to $17. 2 billion.

While some retailers are striking deals with third-party AI platforms to sell products through chatbots — with underwhelming results — Amazon is betting customers will ultimately stick with retailer-built tools like Rufus rather than relying on intermediaries. “We are very bullish on what agentic commerce will look like,” Jassy said on Wednesday’s call.

“I think it’s going to be very good for customers in the long term. I think it’ll be good for us, too.” Still, he said that third-party AI agents fall short. “The experience just hasn’t gotten great with these third-party horizontal agents yet,” Jassy said. “They’re not often able to get the pricing right or the product information right.

They don’t have any personalization data or any shopping history.” Instead, Jassy said shoppers will likely gravitate toward retailer-built tools like Rufus. “If you’re going to a particular retailer that you like to do business with, … if they have a great agentic shopping assistant, you’re going to often start there,” he said.

Despite touting the success of its AI-powered chatbot, Amazon has been under pressure to justify its heavy spending on artificial intelligence. Amazon in February said it planned to sp