In Andy Jassy’s 2025 Letter to Shareholders, the Amazon CEO said the company is planning to scale up its drone delivery service in 2026. He also made other comments about Amazon prioritizing delivery speed, using robots to innovate, and remaining committed to rural customers.
Amazon Set to Scale Drone Delivery in 2026
Recently, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent out his 2025 Letter to Shareholders, which goes over a variety of topics, thoughts, and insights. One of the biggest bits of news for ecommerce sellers is that Amazon is planning to scale up drone delivery in 2026.
The letter said that Prime Air, the company’s drone delivery service, now has a design that’ll scale, and the company plans for it to serve communities with 30 million customers by the end of the year. He also added that he expects the service to deliver around half a billion packages by the end of this decade, with the goal of delivering within 30 minutes of an order.
He also added that these drones will use Amazon Same Day Fulfillment Centers (SSDs) to gather selection and launch. For those unfamiliar, SSDs are a new and more streamlined fulfillment center format that the company invented, and Amazon currently has more than 85 SSDs across the USA that carry the company’s top 90,000 SKUs.
The Company is Prioritizing Fast Delivery in General
Another notable thing covered in the letter is that Amazon is prioritizing fast delivery in general. Specifically, Jassy mentions Amazon Now, which is the company’s rapid delivery service that aims to offer ultra-fast delivery in under 20 minutes on thousands of items.
The company started offering the service in India and the UAE, and customers have responded well to it. As a result, Jassy says the company is starting to expand Amazon Now to the USA and Europe, as well.
This focus on speed isn’t surprising, as customer demands are growing in terms of delivery speed. In fact, fast shipping/delivery is one of the most important aspects of online shopping for consumers.
While Amazon is continuing to work on productivity and inventory levels to speed up deliveries, robots have also played a role in improving delivery speeds. The company has invested in numerous robotics initiatives over the last decade-plus, and now has over a million robots working in fulfillment centers to help with stowing, picking, support, transport, and more.
In addition to robots in fulfillment centers, the company is also experimenting with them in several other ways. For example, Amazon recently acquired a robotics company to test delivery robots for doorstop delivery.
Amazon Remains Committed to Rural Customers
Jassy also made sure to mention Amazon’s commitment to rural customers. Specifically, he mentions that he knows these groups are often not prioritized due to the fact that they’re more expensive to serve.
But while some companies and services are backing away from these customers, Amazon is doing the opposite. He said the company has committed over $4 billion to expand its rural delivery network, and that rural customers have responded well, with the rates of same-day delivery customers nearly doubling in 2025 compared to 2024.
He says that once the expansion of the company’s rural delivery network is complete, Amazon will be able to deliver over a billion more packages each year to customers in more than 13,000 zip codes across 1.2 million square miles.
While it remains to be seen what Amazon is capable of achieving by the end of this year, the company has lofty goals to dramatically scale drone delivery, speed up delivery in general, and continue to show its commitment to the rural customer.
