Amazon's next Alexa AI upgrade may be able to handle more complex tasks. Getting there is expensive, though.
Internal planning documents reviewed by Business Insider show Amazon is working on a previously unreported Alexa project, codenamed Moonraker, to handle more complex, multistep tasks for users.
Moonraker pushes Alexa into the AI agent race. Alexa+, its AI-powered assistant, already lets users book rides or buy tickets through partners such as Uber and Ticketmaster. Moonraker would take that a step further by completing multiple actions from a single request.
The project also highlights the steep cost of building more capable AI. Internal documents show Moonraker quickly became one of the most expensive parts of Amazon's latest Alexa+ overhaul.
Amazon has been working through several Alexa+ growing pains. The company delayed the assistant's rollout multiple times before expanding availability in the US earlier this year. Business Insider previously reported that internal beta testing uncovered problems, such as hallucinations and inconsistent responses, with one employee saying Alexa mistakenly turned off a fish tank filter, killing their fish.
Despite these challenges, Amazon remains committed to expanding Alexa+. In his latest annual shareholder letter, CEO Andy Jassy said customers are talking to Alexa+ twice as much and placing online orders three times more often than before, adding that "Alexa is still early in its journey to be the world's best personal assistant." Amazon declined to comment.
Multiple requests #
The documents describe Moonraker as enabling "multi-request" engagements, offering examples such as "book me a ride and text my friend."
Rather than responding to a single command, the upgrade is designed to help Alexa complete several related actions within one interaction.
It's a move that mirrors other companies, such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, that have introduced agentic AI products that can browse the web and complete multistep workflows.
"Highest cost" new initiative #
Moonraker's ambitions, however, come with a hefty price tag.
One planning document from earlier this year called it Alexa+'s "highest cost" new initiative, projecting more than $100 million in GPU costs in 2026. The document suggested delaying or scaling back the project as one way to ease cost pressures.
Some Amazon leaders feel the team has overspent on the AI models powering Alexa, and the cost of running those models has become a growing internal concern, according to a person familiar with the matter. The pressure reflects a broader reckoning across Silicon Valley as companies grapple with the rising cost of deploying advanced AI systems.
Separate planning documents from late last year show Amazon preparing hundreds of Nvidia GPUs to support Moonraker and using an Anthropic Sonnet model for advanced reasoning and visual response functions as engineers tested the system ahead of a wider rollout.
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