Amazon (AMZN, Financial) stock popped about 2.7% yesterday after word got out that the e-commerce giant is quietly building a “humanoid park” in San Francisco to experiment with AI-powered robots for deliveries.
Instead of relying solely on its 750,000 warehouse bots, Amazon is now eyeing humanoid prototypes—some coming from China's Unitree—that can literally hop out of a Rivian (RIVN) delivery van to drop packages at your doorstep.
Right now, engineers are fine-tuning navigation, object handling and safety systems in a mock urban environment, complete with a single Rivian van parked among obstacles. Meanwhile, over at Amazon's Lab126 in Sunnyvale, a fresh agentic AI team is working on getting these robots to understand and act on natural language commands—imagine telling a bot, “Pick up that package and leave it by the back door” and having it do just that.
All of this is part of Amazon's broader push to shave billions off its fulfillment and delivery bills (which topped $60 billion last year) and stay a step ahead of rivals like Walmart (WMT, Financial) and FedEx (FDX, Financial). While timelines are still fuzzy, CEO Andy Jassy hinted that pilot tests could roll out in select cities later this year. Investors should care because if these humanoid bots make it from test park to real-world routes, Amazon could cut costs, boost delivery speeds and create a new benchmark in last-mile logistics.
