More than half of Amazon’s US deliveries are now completed using its own fleet. So at some point, the company will no longer need to rely on FedEx and/or UPS. It’s also on track to quickly surpass them in terms of packages delivered per year, if it hasn’t already.

But this also means that Amazon has had (and has been developing) its own maps platform to help support its delivery vehicles. Up until recently it was an entirely internal and proprietary tool. But this month, the company started to open it up in preview form (via an API).

What this mean is that if you have a web or mobile application that needs a map or some other kind of location-based feature, you now have the option of using Amazon instead of Google or Apple or some other company.

What’s interesting about this move is that it’s exactly what Amazon did with AWS (its dominant cloud infrastructure business). AWS is a meaningful part of Amazon’s overall business — in fact, it’s responsible for over 10% of the company’s total revenue, and an even bigger part of its operating income.

So this quiet little announcement could be something.

This is an interesting article about Amazon's delivery network, which is now the 4th largest in the United States. Here are the numbers (most of which are as of 2019):

• Since 2014, Amazon has spent $39 billion building out its delivery network. When you add in warehouses and airplanes, this number increases to about $60 billion. As of 2019, Amazon leased 97% of its fulfillment and data center spaces.

• Amazon is becoming increasingly vertically integrated. Last year, Amazon delivered about 58% of the 4.5 billion parcels that it shipped to US consumers. This represents about 22% of all online retail deliveries.

• Outside of the US, Amazon still handles close to 50% of its own order deliveries. By 2025, Bank of America Global Research is predicting that Amazon could grow to handle somewhere between 38% and 49% of all online order deliveries in the US.

• Amazon is the 4th largest in terms of US package deliveries (2019), behind FedEx, UPS, and USPS (in that order).

• Amazon's fulfillment network roughly entails: receiving centers -> fulfillment centers -> sortation centers -> last-mile delivery stations. It's a hub and spoke system with the physical real estate naturally getting smaller as you get closer to the end destination. For a lot more information on their network,

This week the FT reported that Amazon is in "advanced talks" to acquire the self-driving startup Zoox. This would be Amazon's first acquisition in the space, though it did lead a $530M funding round in Aurora in early 2019.

Zoox last raised two years ago and was valued at $3.2 billion. Rumor has it that its valuation will be less than that today. Some of its investors, according to FT, include Breyer Capital and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.

The move seems reasonable. Amazon wants to build out its (driverless) logistics capabilities. It's also in keeping with what we have been seeing from big tech. Companies that can are using this environment to be acquisitive, invest in the future and, hopefully, gain market share. It's probably also inevitable that the self-driving space will see some consolidation going forward.

If you go back to this post from earlier this year, Zoox and Aurora weren't near the top in terms of R&D spending on autonomy. And it has become increasingly clear that this a giant problem/opportunity requiring giant funding capabilities. It's going to take time.

More than half of Amazon’s US deliveries are now completed using its own fleet. So at some point, the company will no longer need to rely on FedEx and/or UPS. It’s also on track to quickly surpass them in terms of packages delivered per year, if it hasn’t already.

But this also means that Amazon has had (and has been developing) its own maps platform to help support its delivery vehicles. Up until recently it was an entirely internal and proprietary tool. But this month, the company started to open it up in preview form (via an API).

What this mean is that if you have a web or mobile application that needs a map or some other kind of location-based feature, you now have the option of using Amazon instead of Google or Apple or some other company.

What’s interesting about this move is that it’s exactly what Amazon did with AWS (its dominant cloud infrastructure business). AWS is a meaningful part of Amazon’s overall business — in fact, it’s responsible for over 10% of the company’s total revenue, and an even bigger part of its operating income.

So this quiet little announcement could be something.

This is an interesting article about Amazon's delivery network, which is now the 4th largest in the United States. Here are the numbers (most of which are as of 2019):

• Since 2014, Amazon has spent $39 billion building out its delivery network. When you add in warehouses and airplanes, this number increases to about $60 billion. As of 2019, Amazon leased 97% of its fulfillment and data center spaces.

• Amazon is becoming increasingly vertically integrated. Last year, Amazon delivered about 58% of the 4.5 billion parcels that it shipped to US consumers. This represents about 22% of all online retail deliveries.

• Outside of the US, Amazon still handles close to 50% of its own order deliveries. By 2025, Bank of America Global Research is predicting that Amazon could grow to handle somewhere between 38% and 49% of all online order deliveries in the US.

• Amazon is the 4th largest in terms of US package deliveries (2019), behind FedEx, UPS, and USPS (in that order).

• Amazon's fulfillment network roughly entails: receiving centers -> fulfillment centers -> sortation centers -> last-mile delivery stations. It's a hub and spoke system with the physical real estate naturally getting smaller as you get closer to the end destination. For a lot more information on their network,

This week the FT reported that Amazon is in "advanced talks" to acquire the self-driving startup Zoox. This would be Amazon's first acquisition in the space, though it did lead a $530M funding round in Aurora in early 2019.

Zoox last raised two years ago and was valued at $3.2 billion. Rumor has it that its valuation will be less than that today. Some of its investors, according to FT, include Breyer Capital and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.

The move seems reasonable. Amazon wants to build out its (driverless) logistics capabilities. It's also in keeping with what we have been seeing from big tech. Companies that can are using this environment to be acquisitive, invest in the future and, hopefully, gain market share. It's probably also inevitable that the self-driving space will see some consolidation going forward.

If you go back to this post from earlier this year, Zoox and Aurora weren't near the top in terms of R&D spending on autonomy. And it has become increasingly clear that this a giant problem/opportunity requiring giant funding capabilities. It's going to take time.