AI Daily: Amazon introduces next-generation assistant Alexa+

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

REVAMPED ALEXA WITH AI: At its annual Devices & Services event, Amazon (AMZN) introduced Alexa+, the company’s next generation assistant, powered by generative AI. According to the company, “Alexa+ helps you stay organized during busy days, provides detailed answers tailored to your needs, and handles everything from project planning to solving daily challenges-all through natural conversation.” Daniel Rausch, vice president for Alexa and Echo, took the stage to share additional new features and explain the sophisticated technology powering Alexa+. The system’s deep knowledge foundation is supported by partnerships with major news organizations including Associated Press, Reuters, TIME, USA TODAY, Politico and many others, which enables Alexa+ to “provide quick, accurate responses across countless topics, from financial markets to sports statistics,” the company stated.

Rausch also offered a glimpse into the future for Alexa+ by breaking down the technical components of how Alexa connects to hundreds of APIs to get stuff done. Through Experts and deep knowledge integration, Alexa+ will work behind the scenes to seamlessly coordinate multiple services – from making a dinner reservation for two via OpenTable to booking an Uber (UBER) for your friend to meet you at lunch and texting them your plans. Talking about a future full of agents with specialized skills and interoperability between agents, Rausch showed integration with Suno to turn “simple, creative requests into complete songs, including vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation.” He announced a preview of the new Alexa AI Multi-Agent software development kit that will let brands showcase their agent alongside Alexa. Lastly, Rausch showed a glimpse of a future capability that will enable customers conversationally create and edit grocery lists on the fly, revise a list based on dietary preferences, and add ingredients to an Amazon Fresh order. The experience will also integrate with Whole Foods and partners like Grubhub (JTKWY).

Amazon’s Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but is free for all Prime members. Alexa+ will start rolling out in the U.S. in the next few weeks, and subsequently in waves in the coming months starting with households with Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21.

AI OPTIMISM: Bernstein upgraded Alibaba (BABA) to Outperform from Market Perform with a price target of $165, up from $104, telling investors that the combination of the “more gainful capital allocation” of spending on AI infrastructure, over “chasing Temu” (PDD) in global markets, plus a better industry structure for AI than legacy cloud and possible spill-over effects of the AI capex boom in China makes the firm feel that Alibaba earnings “could now be on a more upwardly-pointing trajectory.”

CHIP ORDERS: Tencent (TCEHY), Alibaba, ByteDance, and other Chinese companies are ramping up orders for Nvidia’s (NVDA) H20 AI chip due to increasing demand for DeepSeek’s models, Reuters’ Fanny Potkin and Che Pan report, citing people familiar with the matter. DeepSeek is a Chinese-built large-language open-source model that claims to rival offerings from Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta Platforms (META) but using a much smaller budget.