We all know that e-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is downright notorious these days for pushing the technological envelope and bringing out new tools and features. In fact, it’s up nearly 1.5% in Tuesday afternoon’s trading thanks to a whole slew of new features that are drawing users’ and investors’ attention.
Perhaps the biggest of these is a new grocery delivery operation that’s already hitting the competition right in the market cap. In fact, Maplebear (NASDAQ:CART), perhaps better known as Instacart, is down just over 7% on the news that Amazon is aiming its delivery skills at groceries. Under the new plan, Amazon Prime members—at least, those who live in one of 3,500 cities or towns throughout the United States who have a Whole Foods location in the neighborhood—can have orders over $35 delivered to them for $9.99 per month. It also works for Amazon Fresh and some local grocery and specialty retailers.
Augmenting Its AI Presence, Too
Delivering groceries is a great move and a natural extension of Amazon’s already formidable capabilities in product delivery and order fulfillment. But Amazon is also working on its artificial intelligence (AI) presence. In fact, it’s rolled out new features to Bedrock, which will allow it to accept custom models uploaded by customers.
That, in turn, will make Bedrock more flexible and client-centric, working to the customer’s needs and making it a more attractive proposition. Currently, Bedrock Custom Model Import supports Llama, Mistral, and Flan-T5 open model architectures.
Is Amazon a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 42 Buys assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 69.1% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $212.41 per share implies 18.24% upside potential.
