Amazon Expands Alexa+ With New Tablets Following Leadership Shake-Up

Amazon is making changes to its Alexa and Echo leadership team as it looks to strengthen its voice assistant and expand its range of AI-powered products.

Daniel Rausch, who has spent 17 years at Amazon, will step down from his role as vice president of Alexa and Echo next month. He has led the division for more than three years and frequently represented Alexa at company events and product launches. Amazon said Rausch will return to another role within its devices and services division in 2027.

Aidan Marcuss will take over leadership of the Alexa division. He joined Amazon from Microsoft in early 2025 and currently oversees Fire TV, advertising and the Amazon Appstore. Marcuss recently led the launch of a new Fire TV Stick, which received mixed reviews.

Meanwhile, Kevin Keith, Amazon’s vice president of product and marketing, will retain his current role while temporarily taking on some of Marcuss’ responsibilities. Amazon has not provided further details about the leadership changes.

Alexa has been part of Amazon’s product lineup since 2014, but turning the voice assistant into a profitable business has proved challenging. The company has spent several years working on a more advanced version powered by generative AI, hoping to make the assistant more capable and useful.

The upgraded assistant, called Alexa+, is designed to understand longer requests and deliver more detailed responses than the traditional Alexa. Amazon hopes these improvements will encourage customers to use the assistant more frequently and strengthen demand for its devices and services.

Alexa+ also features in Amazon’s newly announced tablets, which are positioned as higher-end products compared with the company’s earlier, more affordable Fire tablets. Customers can access Alexa+ through an Amazon Prime membership, which costs $139 per year, or subscribe separately for $20 per month.

The leadership reshuffle comes as Amazon works to improve its AI services and find new ways to grow its Alexa business. The company is investing in both the software behind its assistant and the devices through which customers use it. The challenge will be to turn Alexa+’s improved capabilities into a service that people rely on regularly while building a sustainable business around it.

Alexa+ and Amazon’s new devices could play an important role in the company’s next phase of growth. How effectively the new leadership guides this strategy may help determine whether Amazon can make its voice assistant more useful to customers and more commercially successful.

This article is based on information from The Indian Express