Amazon's sales rise last quarter was driven by holiday customers, according to the business, which also debuted a new AI shopping assistant on Thursday.
The e-commerce leader posted sales of $170 billion for the quarter that ended in December, above Wall Street's expectations and increasing 14% over the same period last year.
And the company is now attempting to provide customers with a fresh shopping experience while indicating to investors that it is doubling down on artificial intelligence. Ahead of Thursday's earnings release, Amazon announced the addition of an AI-powered shopping assistant called "Rufus" to its e-commerce business.
Rufus has been "trained on our very expansive product catalog, as well as our community Q&A, customer reviews, and the broader web," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated during a call with analysts. "It lets customers discover items in a very different way than they have been able to on an e-commerce website."
Rufus went live in beta on Thursday for a limited fraction of Amazon app users, but it will be available to more US consumers in the coming weeks.
Amazon also posted quarterly profits of around $10.6 billion on Thursday.
This article was originally published on CNN.