Fortune announced its 2025 list of the World’s Most Admired companies, and this year, Amazon ranked third—its ninth consecutive year as a top three innovator. The annual ranking is determined by a survey of top executives and analysts, and companies are evaluated based on nine criteria, including innovation in products and services, quality of management, and commitments to social responsibility.
Through our industry-leading innovations, our teams work to support and deliver for our customers, our employees, and the communities we serve. Here are just a few ways these innovations came to life in 2024:
We continued to make customers’ lives easier and better every day
While our business has evolved over the years, one constant is our customers’ desire for lower prices, better selection, and convenient services. Whether it’s delivering fresh produce to their doorstep, creating and distributing movies, offering the broadest selection in retail—including 300 million items available with fast, free Prime delivery—and much more, our teams around the world are always finding new ways to invent on behalf of our customers every day.
We increased the average total compensation package, including elected benefits, for fulfillment and transportation employees in the U.S. to over $29 per hour
Amazon made its biggest annual investment in pay and benefits—a total of more than $2.2 billion across our network, and an increase of $3,000 a year on average for full-time employees who work a 40-hour week. For many years, we’ve worked hard to innovate for employees to offer competitive benefits, which include things like health care from the first day on the job for many employees, dental coverage, a 401(k) program with a company match, flexible working hours, and even prepaid college tuition.
We continued to launch new opportunities that provide employees with access to education and skills training programs through 2025
We want to make it easy for employees to develop their skills and innovate their careers for the future. More than 350,000 U.S. employees have participated in our free education and skills training programs since 2019. We’ve also invested hundreds of millions of dollars to provide free cloud computing skills training to millions of people around the world with programs for the public. Our company-funded training programs, such as AWS Intelligence Initiative and Career Choice, help employees learn critical skills to move into in-demand, higher-paying technical or nontechnical roles within Amazon and beyond.
We committed $3.6 billion to create and preserve 35,000 affordable homes
We believe that everyone should have access to housing they can afford. That’s why we created the Amazon Housing Equity Fund. In the last year alone, we committed $1.4 billion to create or preserve affordable homes, driving innovation for a number of communities. This latest investment brings Amazon’s total commitment to more than $3.6 billion supporting the creation of more than 35,000 affordable homes.
We invested an additional $2.1 billion in the Delivery Service Partner program—our biggest investment yet
In 2018, we launched our Delivery Service Partner program to empower hands-on entrepreneurs to build, grow, and innovate their delivery companies with us. Today, we work with more than 4,400 passionate owners who have created 390,000 jobs, and generated $58 billion in total revenue for their companies across 20 countries. Last year, we invested $2.1 billion in the program, bringing our total investment to $12.3 billion over the last six years.
We delivered at our fastest speeds ever for Prime members in the U.S. and globally, innovating for customers worldwide
Last year, we announced we hit our fastest Prime delivery speeds ever in the U.S. and around the world, with more than 5 billion items arriving the same or next day globally. We now offer Same-Day Delivery on millions of items across more than 120 U.S. metro areas from San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta to Cedar Rapids, Daytona Beach, and Baton Rouge.
We created 250,000 jobs to support customer demand this past holiday season
As one of the country’s largest job creators, we created a diverse range of more than 250,000 seasonal, full-time, and part-time roles across our customer fulfillment and transportation network. Learn more about our holiday hiring.
We leveraged our technology and global logistics network to provide fast, effective aid for communities impacted by natural disasters
We responded to 39 natural disasters across 18 countries—including the devastating California wildfires, hurricanes in the Southeast U.S., and flooding across central Europe and Southern Spain—using our logistics network to donate and deliver 4 million relief items to nonprofit partners, and deploy our AWS cloud technology to help local governments and orgs stay connected. We’ve used our logistics infrastructure and expertise to respond to 45 natural disasters across America since 2021.
We launched new AI tech in Amazon vans that spotlights packages to save drivers effort and time
Last year, we introduced Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR), a new AI-powered solution in U.S. delivery vans that uses cameras and LED lights to highlight packages at each stop, simplifying deliveries for drivers. Drivers no longer have to spend time organizing packages by stops, reading labels, or manually checking key identifiers like a customer’s name or address to ensure they have the right packages. Amazon will deploy this innovative technology in 1,000 of its electric delivery vans this year, saving drivers up to 30 minutes per route.
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