Amazon’s secret ‘Moonraker’ project pushes Alexa into the AI-agent race

Amazon has an agentic upgrade for Alexa in the works, codenamed Moonraker. Internal documents show it is also one of the priciest bets in the Alexa+ overhaul.

Amazon wants Alexa to act, not just answer. The company has a previously unreported project, codenamed Moonraker, that would let Alexa handle complex, multistep tasks, Business Insider reports, citing internal planning documents.

The push drops Alexa into the AI agent race. Alexa+, the assistant’s AI-powered version, already books rides and buys tickets through partners such as Uber and Ticketmaster. Moonraker goes further. It aims to complete several linked actions from a single request, like “book me a ride and text my friend”.

That mirrors the agentic products from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, which can browse the web and run multistep workflows. The whole industry chases the same goal.

The price of a smarter Alexa

The catch is the cost. One planning document from earlier this year called Moonraker Alexa+’s “highest cost” new initiative. It projected more than $100m in GPU costs for 2026 alone. The same document floated delaying or scaling the project back to ease the pressure.

Some Amazon leaders feel the team has overspent on the AI models behind Alexa. A person familiar with the matter said the running costs are a growing concern. The worry runs wider than Amazon. It reflects a broader reckoning over the cost of running advanced AI. The same pressure now weighs on Amazon’s record AI build-out.

To power Moonraker, Amazon lined up hundreds of Nvidia GPUs. Engineers tested it using an Anthropic Sonnet model for advanced reasoning and visual responses, the documents show.

Growing pains

Alexa+ has had a bumpy path. Amazon delayed it several times before expanding in the US earlier this year. Beta testers hit hallucinations and odd behaviour. One said Alexa turned off a fish-tank filter and killed their fish.

Amazon presses on. In his latest shareholder letter, chief executive Andy Jassy struck an upbeat note. People talk to Alexa+ twice as much as before, he said, and order three times as often. “Alexa is still early in its journey to be the world’s best personal assistant,” he wrote. Amazon declined to comment.

Why it matters

Voice assistants have promised to run our errands for a decade and mostly just set timers. An agentic Alexa that shops and acts on your behalf could finally change that. It would also put Amazon’s huge base of devices to work. But the $100m question is whether the payoff justifies the bill. Amazon’s own documents already ask it.

Published July 8, 2026 - 10:33 am UTC

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