Amazon’s upgraded voice assistant is getting smarter. It is also getting a lot more expensive to run.
Internal planning documents show Amazon projected approximately $1.7 billion in AWS cloud costs for Alexa+ in 2026. That figure nearly triples the prior year’s total.
The documents also show Amazon weighing two cost-cutting moves. One is leaning less on Anthropic’s models. The other is spending less on Moonraker, an AI agent project tied to Alexa+.
Where the money is going
Generative AI features demand far more computing power per request than the old command-and-response Alexa did. According to the planning documents, Alexa+ draws on multiple models to deliver those features, and each conversation carries a real compute bill.
The projected jump to approximately $1.7 billion is driven mainly by rising memory and component costs. Those same pressures are squeezing margins in Amazon’s device business.
Amazon did go looking for savings. The company identified potential cuts of around $450 million across Alexa+ operations.
A central piece of that plan involves moving some workloads away from Anthropic models and toward cheaper systems Amazon builds itself.
Even with those savings on the table, the Alexa+ division was still expected to miss its financial targets for the year.
Moonraker lands on the chopping block
Moonraker was designed to expand what Alexa can actually do, pushing it toward more advanced AI capabilities. The planning documents flag it as the single highest-cost initiative connected to Alexa+.
GPU expenses for Moonraker alone were forecast to exceed $100 million in 2026.
That price tag pushed Amazon to consider delaying the project or scaling it back. The documents frame this as an option under consideration rather than a final call, so Moonraker’s fate remains unsettled.
Background: Alexa+ goes wide
The cost pressure arrives just as Alexa+ is reaching more people. In 2026, Amazon began offering broader access to the service.
Prime members get full functionality at no extra charge. Everyone else can subscribe for $19.99/month.
The Alexa+ numbers also sit inside a much bigger spending picture. Amazon’s projected capital expenditures for 2026 are approximately $220 billion, much of it tied to building out infrastructure.
Against that backdrop, a cloud bill of approximately $1.7 billion for one product is small in relative terms. It is still large enough to draw scrutiny when the product is not hitting its financial goals.
What this means
The possible move away from Anthropic models is the detail most likely to catch the industry’s attention. If Amazon shifts work to its own cheaper systems, it would signal that in-house models are becoming good enough for at least some consumer tasks.
For Anthropic, the planning documents describe a reduction under consideration rather than a confirmed exit.
Rising component and memory costs are hitting both the cloud side and the device side of the Alexa business at once.
Key items to track from here include whether Amazon formally delays or shrinks Moonraker, how much of the roughly $450 million in identified savings actually materializes, and whether the shift toward in-house models changes the quality of Alexa+ for users. Pricing is another lever to watch. If costs keep rising, the $19.99/month tier and the Prime bundle could face pressure to evolve.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.