Welcome to the Amazon.com Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I'm David Zapolsky, Secretary and General Counsel. I now call the formal portion of this meeting to order. This is our 24th annual meeting since we became a public company. Today's agenda covers our items of business and rules of procedure. Please note that in the event an unanticipated issue prevents us from being able to continue this annual meeting, we will post updated meeting information on our investor relations website. After the formal portion of the meeting, we will have presentations by Brian Olsavsky, our CFO, Beth Galetti, our Senior Vice President, People Experience and Technology, Alicia Boler Davis, our Vice President for Global Customer Fulfillment, and Alice Shobe, our Director for Amazon in the Community. Finally, Angie Quennell, Head of Financial Communications, will moderate the Q&A session with Jeff Bezos, our CEO and Chairman of the Board.
Angie, can you provide details on how to submit a question?
Thanks, David. If you wish to submit a question and have not already done so prior to the meeting, please type your name and your question into the Ask a Question field on the website you have used to access this meeting and click Submit. Out of respect for your fellow shareholders, we ask that each person be concise and limit themselves to one question.
Thank you. It's now my pleasure to introduce our directors who are attending this meeting, including those joining us remotely. Jeff Bezos, Keith Alexander, Jamie Gorelick, Daniel Huttenlocher, Judy McGrath, Indra Nooyi, Jonathan Rubinstein, Thomas Ryder, Patricia Stonesifer, and Wendell Weeks. Also joining us remotely today are representatives of our auditors, Ernst & Young. The polls opened at the beginning of the meeting. We will close the polls on all matters immediately after presentation of today's proposals. If you wish to vote during the meeting, please follow the instructions on the meeting website before the polls close. If you have already voted in advance of the meeting, you do not need to vote again unless you requested a legal proxy or wish to change your vote.
Broadridge was appointed our inspector of elections, has taken the required oath, and has certified that notice of this meeting was mailed beginning on April 15th, 2021 to all shareholders of record as of the record date, and that a majority of our common stock is present or represented by proxies. Therefore, a quorum exists for this meeting. Each of the proposals to be voted on today is set forth in our proxy statement. No other nominations or proposals will be introduced. I'll now introduce the company's proposals, which are the election of directors, the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young as independent auditors for fiscal 2021, and an advisory vote to approve executive compensation. We have 11 shareholder proposals to be voted on if properly presented.
To ensure that we have adequate time for our Q&A session later in the meeting, each proponent will have two minutes to pre-present their proposal. If a proponent goes beyond two minutes, we will need to place the line on mute so that we can continue the meeting. Thank you in advance for your understanding. Albert Fox Cahn will now introduce Proposal #4 , requesting a report on customer due diligence. Mr. Cahn has pre-recorded the following statement.
Hello, my name is Albert Fox Cahn, and I'm the Executive Director of STOP, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy and civil rights group. I'm here to present item 4 on behalf of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood and eight co-filers. We call on Amazon's board to commission an independent report on Amazon's due diligence for users of its surveillance, computer vision, and cloud-based products, identifying how such products enable customers' violation of human rights. Amazon's facial recognition and surveillance products create a tool that can easily be weaponized to suppress political dissent, track marginalized communities, and undermine democracy itself. Facial recognition puts Black Americans at higher risk of wrongful arrest, false imprisonment, and even police violence. When Amazon supposedly improved the accuracy of its facial recognition system, it allegedly violated Illinois law.
Amazon's moratorium on the sale of facial recognition products is a half measure at best, and it falls short of providing the safeguards we require. Not only did this moratorium allow continued sale and use of facial recognition in some cases, it is set to expire even though the risks from facial recognition are no less today than they were when the moratorium was created. Facial recognition is far from being the only Amazon system of concern. Amazon's Ring home surveillance system has been hijacked by local police departments to track Black-led protests against police violence. Ring has partnerships with more than 2,000 police and fire departments across the country, with almost no protections against this misuse. Please vote yes and join us in supporting the call for an independent report on these human rights abuses.
Thank you. Just to correct the record, as we said recently, we are extending until further notice a moratorium we imposed last year on the use of AWS facial recognition technology by police. Moving on to Proposal #5 , Marcela Pinilla will now introduce Proposal #5 , requesting mandatory Independent Board Chair policy. Operator, please open the line for Ms. Pinilla.
Thank you. Greetings, fellow shareholders, Amazon management, and members of the Amazon board. My name is Marcela Pinilla, and I am Director of Sustainable Investing at Zevin Asset Management. Our clients care about embedded risks related to environmental, social, and governance factors in their investments. I am here today to address an important governance issue at Amazon and to move item number five on the proxy ballot. Our shareholder proposal requests that Amazon adopt a policy to have an independent chairperson oversee the board of directors. In February of this year, Jeff Bezos announced he will be stepping down as CEO sometime in the third quarter, but that he intends to remain Executive Chairman. Respectfully, we do not believe that Jeff Bezos would provide essential independent oversight of the board because he is the founder of the Company and has a deeply rooted history of leading Amazon.
His stature as founder and significant shareholder is likely to censor dissenting voices and inhibit an incoming CEO. A truly independent Board Chair would have no affiliation with the company, and they would not be a former executive officer of the Company. This would enable the independent chair to provide new insights and better oversight for Amazon. Amazon maintains that an independent Board Chair is not needed because the lead director provides competent oversight. With all due respect to the board, neither the lead director nor the rest of the board have, in our view, acted sufficiently to oversee and curb the troubling risk-taking behavior of Amazon's executive team. There are pressing examples of challenges facing Amazon: extreme labor concerns and over-the-top anti-union practices, aggressive Pentagon and DHS contracting, and controversial products like Rekognition. Each of these areas has the potential to jeopardize Amazon's long-term shareholder value.
We believe Amazon executives have taken on excessive risks and injured relationships with key stakeholders, especially its workers and communities that it serves. In closing, an independent Board Chair would help confront the company's many challenges, oversee executives' risky behavior, and question ideas that could harm long-term value creation. Current corporate governance practices are evidently not fit for purpose, and a failure to adopt an independent board chair policy could jeopardize Amazon's success. Thank you.
Thank you. Natasha Lamb will now introduce Proposal #6 , requesting additional reporting on gender and racial pay. Ms. Lamb has pre-recorded the following statement.
Good morning. My name is Natasha Lamb, Managing Partner at Arjuna Capital. I move Proposal #6 , asking for a report on racial and gender pay gaps as a means to address structural pay inequity. As investors, we have worked with many companies, including Amazon, pressing them to be more transparent on pay equity. Many, including Amazon, are now comfortable publishing statistically adjusted numbers, assessing whether minorities and non-minorities and women and men are paid similarly for the same jobs. That data does not address the structural racism and sexism that relegate people of color and women to low-paying job categories and stand in the way of more diverse, innovative organizations. Black workers in the U.S. earn $0.75 on the dollar versus white workers for full-time work. Women in the U.S. earn $0.82 on the dollar versus men.
These statistics are troubling, and the data is raw. The data is not statistically massaged to make it look like there is pay equity by breaking employees into their respective job buckets. It is straight up what they are paid for full-time work versus their white majority and male peers. The companies that are comfortable publishing unadjusted data, Citigroup, Starbucks, Adobe, Pfizer, Mastercard, and others, are showing leadership. They are not hiding behind massaged data because they know that by being transparent, they are creating a new standard for accountability and performance. I am frustrated to say that Amazon is not one of those companies, and I'm surprised that, given where we are as a country, the pay divides that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and the protests to uphold Black Lives, the company continues to fight this simple and reasonable request.
Thank you for your time, as we firmly believe our company is best served by a transparent, fulsome, and honest accounting of pay equity.
Thank you. Hana Thier will now introduce Proposal #7 , requesting a report on promotion data. Ms. Thier has pre-recorded the following statement.
Amazon tells a public story about how it values inclusion and uplifts the voices of marginalized groups within the company. The slick copy on the careers site does not match up to the reality in the workplace. Black and Hispanic employees remain underrepresented in corporate roles at Amazon. The company obfuscates those poor numbers when it cites statistics across the whole company, which include magnitudes more hourly fulfillment center workers than salaried corporate ones. Women remain a minority of workers on technical teams. Journalistic investigations and viral social media stories continue to shine light on a toxic culture that devalues the contributions of women. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced an exodus of women from the labor force to care for their families. Amazon has made a few changes to support the caregivers among its ranks.
Since the start of the year, Amazon has come under increasing public pressure to live up to its stated stances on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Amazon faces a high-profile lawsuit from a former employee who left the company after being harassed and subjected to racist comments from her management chain. Over 200 alumni, faculty, and students from Harvard Business School have written an open letter that calls on Amazon to take specific steps, not offer empty platitudes, to address corporate discrimination. One recommendation of the Harvard letter is here presented as a shareholder resolution. Amazon must generate and publish a report that tracks promotion data broken down by race and gender. Amazon must implement robust mechanisms to correct the disparities that the report will show. I urge you to vote yes on the promotion velocity resolution.
It will force Amazon to live up to its reputation for data-based decisions and stated public support for its women workers and workers of color.
Thank you. Conrad MacKerron will now introduce Proposal #8 , requesting a report on packaging materials. Mr. MacKerron has pre-recorded the following statement.
Good morning. I'm Conrad MacKerron, Senior Vice President of As You Sow, filer of Proposal 8 on the Amazon proxy. Plastic pollution has become an international environmental crisis, drawing top-of-mind attention from governments and citizens. Public concerns about plastic pollution now rivals that of climate change. 11 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, fatally impacting more than 800 marine species and causing up to $2.5 trillion in damage annually to marine ecosystems. Every month brings new reports of degraded plastic in our air, water, and food. Amazon's substantial and growing use of plastic packaging exposes the company to increased financial and reputational risk.
Our proposal asks the company to report on how much of its plastic packaging is released to the environment to help investors assess its exposure to plastics-related risks and to set goals for significant cuts to help manage that risk. The company lags its peers in addressing this growing problem. Amazon has not taken basic actions such as disclosing the amount of plastic it uses or committed to cuts in plastic use as competing retailers like Target and Walmart have done. Researchers say companies need to cut their plastic use by 1/3 to be able to reduce ocean plastic pollution 80% by 2040. A report by environmental group Oceana estimated that Amazon generates 465 million pounds of e-commerce plastic packaging waste annually, and that 22 million pounds of that is mismanaged and may enter and pollute freshwater and marine ecosystems.
The company says it does not use that much plastic, but it's declined to say how much it does use. I move Proposal 8 and ask for your support. The information requested will help investors assess the extent of the company's exposure to plastic pollution and encourage it to step up and match its peers by committing to significant cuts in plastic use. Thank you.
Thank you. Darryl Richardson will now introduce Proposal #9 , requesting a diversity and equity audit report. Mr. Richardson has pre-recorded the following statement.
On behalf of New York State Common Retirement Fund, trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, I urge Amazon stockholders to vote for Proposal 9, which is a civil right, equitable, diversity, and inclusive audit. I am Darryl Richardson. I work for Amazon in Alabama. Following George Floyd murder last May, our CEO, Jeff Bezos, pledged support for Black Lives Matter and to fight against systemic racism. One of the best ways Amazon can act on this commitment would to adopt Proposal 9 to conduct an independent civil right, equitable, diversity, and inclusive audit. I know personally how much we need such an audit. I just lived through Amazon anti-union campaign at our facility in Bessemer. In addition, we have seen report from Amazon workers as well that they have faced racist discrimination, including accusation of discriminatory wages and racist bias in Amazon's hiring practice.
We have heard accusations about the biased use of Amazon Ring footage and controversy around the sale of product that promote hatred on Amazon website. If Amazon was actually committed to ending systemic racism, it would listen to its Black workers, not campaign against them. It would gather information from its stockholders about the racial justice and equitable impact, and it would develop a plan to address them, thereby mitigating the associated risk and ensuring that its policy and practice truly align with its words. Other companies, including Facebook, Starbucks, BlackRock, and Morgan Stanley, has done so or committed to do so. In the equity of Mr. Bezos, Amazon should strive to be the Earth's most equal company, ensure an equitable and non-discriminatory experience for all its employees, customers, and stockholders. We encourage Amazon stockholders to vote for Proposal 9.
Thank you. Jennifer Bates will now introduce Proposal # 10, requesting an alternative director candidate policy. Ms. Bates has pre-recorded the following statement.
My name is Jennifer Bates, and I will present ballot Proposal # 10 on behalf of Oxfam America and co-filers
The proposal calls on Amazon to consider hourly associates as candidates for the board of directors. I know from my own experience working at Amazon that it does not listen to its workers. I have tried on many of occasions to raise concerns about workplace safety, scheduling, and discipline, but managers are unavailable, don't listen, or simply dismiss me. I'm not alone. Media interviews with the Amazon warehouses workers in the U.S., U.K., and throughout Europe all tell similar stories of grueling hours of back-breaking physical labor, fears about taking time off task, discipline by algorithm, and a management team that does not care about frontline workers. That's why my fellow workers and I tried to organize a union in our facility. When we did, instead of sitting down and talking with us, Amazon launched a ferocious campaign against us.
Managers bombarded us with anti-union meetings, anti-union texts, posters, and videos. They even put anti-union messages in the bathroom stalls. Ignoring workers' concerns is not a good look for Amazon. Amazon may not be listening to our concerns, but the media is. Stories critical of Amazon's labor practices run every day. Members of Congress are listening, too. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized Amazon for how it treats its workers. Having one of us on the Amazon board would be transformative. It would demonstrate to all of us working at Amazon that the company values and wants to hear from its workers within the top levels of leadership. It would send a signal that our voices matter. It would also be good for the company. We want this company to succeed, and we can make sure that the leadership understands its most important asset, the workers.
This is one step among many that we would like to see taken, but this is an important one. I urge you to vote in favor of the proposal.
Thank you. Cynthia Simon will now introduce Proposal # 11, requesting a report on competition strategy and risk. Operator, please open the line for Ms. Simon.
Good morning. My name is Cynthia Simon. On behalf of the CTW Investment Group, I hereby move item 11, urging the board of directors to report on its processes and mechanisms for oversight of risks related to anti-competitive practices. Backlash against anti-competitive practices can harm Amazon's public reputation and increase pressure for new regulations. Amazon is under scrutiny from complaints by third-party sellers regarding a lack of unbiased and objective search results. There are controversies surrounding Amazon's use of its data on third-party sellers to launch competing products, the preferential placement Amazon accords to its own products, and the favorable treatment of sellers who use its fulfillment services. The House Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Subcommittee held seven hearings in 2019 related to competition in digital market, including one at which CEO Jeff Bezos testified.
The House Subcommittee's report concluded that Amazon engages in, and I quote, "extensive anti-competitive conduct in its treatment of third-party sellers." End quote. The FTC and the California and New York Attorneys General are investigating Amazon for its use of third-party seller data. The European Commission charged Amazon in November 2020 with anti-competitive practices and opened a second investigation on Amazon's treatment of third-party sellers. Both the EU and the House Antitrust Subcommittee are considering new regulations to address structural competition problems. Robust board oversight would improve management of risks related to these controversies and the development of new regulations targeting Amazon and other big tech companies. I urge a vote for Proposal 11, requesting a report on processes and mechanisms for board oversight of anti-competitive practices. Thank you.
Thank you. James McRitchie will now introduce Proposal # 12, requesting an additional reduction in threshold for calling special shareholder meetings. Operator, please open the line for Mr. McRitchie.
Thank you. This is James McRitchie. Shareholders have been asking Amazon to reduce the threshold for special meetings for years. After substantial votes in favor, the board reduced the threshold, not to the 20% requested, but to 25%. Consider that 13% of shareholders did not vote last year. Amazon's special meeting threshold of 25% is deceptive. That 25% threshold, when applied to actual votes, yields a threshold of about 29% of the shares typically voted. Sounds a lot like the old 30% threshold. To hold a special meeting, 29% of shareholders who vote would be required. Our proposed threshold of 20% of outstanding shares would require 23% of shareholders who normally vote to participate. Also consider that Jeff Bezos and other insiders hold about 14% of the shares.
They're not gonna be in any group calling for a special meeting. Factor that in. Shareholders who want to call a special meeting need to get about a third of the possible universe involved before they can do so. 20% is a more appropriate threshold. Let me just take another minute to warn shareholders who want to vote. You should do so now. Don't wait until all the proposals have been presented. Amazon has already told you they will close the polls immediately once these proposals have been presented. That doesn't make any sense. The purpose of presenting proposals at the meeting is to allow shareholders to consider arguments presented and then vote. Closing the polls immediately makes a mockery of the whole process. Unfortunately, that's what we see here.
They care more about imposing their own will than in reflecting the wishes of their shareholders. Vote now and don't just vote for Proposal # 12. Vote for Proposal # 4 through 14. Let's build back better without dictators or oligarchs. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Bruce Herbert will now introduce Proposal # 13, requesting additional reporting on lobbying. Operator, please open the line for Mr. Herbert.
Good morning. I am Bruce Herbert of Newground Social Investment. I stand with co-sponsor, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to move Proposal 13, which seeks disclosure of Amazon's lobbying. Though Amazon once made lobbying disclosures, they stopped doing so in 2020. All we know is that over the four years leading up to 2020, it spent $65 million on federal lobbying, which ignores state lobbying, which could be even more. In this, Amazon is headed in the wrong direction. Until 2020, it reported the amounts paid to trade associations and 501(c)(4)s. Its spend increased fivefold from $2 million up to $11 million before disclosure stopped. Today, shareholders are left in the dark, which begs the question, how much more have payments increased, and to whom? Historically, Amazon's lobbying showed a company out of control.
For instance, despite assertions to the contrary, Amazon contributed to organizations linked with the U.S. Capitol insurrection and climate science denial. Amazon failed to disclose belonging to the Business Roundtable, which, in a single year, spent $23.2 million on lobbying and seeks to curb the right of shareholders to file a shareholder proposal like the ones being considered today. Amazon joined the We Are Still In campaign, then donated to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which disputes climate science. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge, is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent over $1.5 billion lobbying to undermine the Paris Agreement. In closing, glaring contradictions abound, they destroy Amazon's credibility, negatively impact our ability to attract and retain key talent, and harm shareholder value.
Please vote for a necessary resumption of and expansion of Amazon's lobbying disclosure, Proposal # 13. Thank you.
Thank you. Michael Connor will now introduce Proposal # 14, requesting a report on customer use of certain technologies. Operator, please open the line for Mr. Connor.
Thank you. My name is Michael Connor. I am Executive Director of Open MIC, a nonprofit that works to foster greater corporate accountability of the tech sector. I am here on behalf of Harrington Investments to move Proposal # 14, which seeks an independent study of an AWS product called Rekognition and the extent to which this facial recognition technology threatens or violates the privacy or civil rights of people all around the world. We believe the company's management and board have failed to exercise fiduciary oversight by inadequately assessing the risks posed by Rekognition. Face surveillance dramatically expands law enforcement's power and threatens rights, including privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and due process for everyone. The threats are greatest for Black and brown communities, Muslim communities, immigrant communities, Indigenous communities, and other people historically and currently marginalized and targeted by policing.
Researchers at MIT have found that recognition demonstrates gender and racial bias and is far more likely to misidentify women and people with dark skin. While the company disputes that research, some lawmakers have questioned whether the technology should be used at all, even if it is 100% accurate. Over a dozen U.S. cities have banned face recognition, and multiple states have placed restrictions on its use. Amazon recently extended, until further notice, a moratorium on police use of recognition, but that moratorium does not affect government agencies or the use of recognition by foreign governments. Many advocates believe Amazon must now broaden the scope of the moratorium to bar the use of recognition not only by police, but also by any government agency or any law enforcement anywhere in the world. In last year's voting, this proposal won 32% of the shareholder vote.
We urge shareholders to vote for Proposal # 14. Thank you.
Thank you. The proxy statement for this meeting explains the reasons for the company's recommendation against each of the shareholder proposals. That concludes the presentation of the proposals. The polls are now closed on all proposals, and the formal portion of this meeting is now adjourned. Each nominee for director received a majority of the votes cast for such nominee's election, so all 10 nominees have been duly elected. Each of the other Company proposals has passed with a majority vote, and a majority of the shares present and entitled to vote on the matter were voted against each of the shareholder proposals. I would now like to introduce Brian Olsavsky, who will give a financial update for the company.
I have helped deliver 12 million meals to families in need. We can deliver for food banks and schools. Amazon knows how to do that.
Climate change doesn't allow us to sit back and be passive. We can't wait.
Effective November 1st, we are establishing a new Amazon minimum wage of $15 an hour.
Here at Amazon, I make $3 more per hour than I did at my previous job. I am a student, and now I'm saving to buy my first house.
Oh!
Oh. Yay.
Mark, we know you've been working so hard at Seattle Children's Hospital, you know, your home got flooded. That was so unfortunate, but what's really fortunate is that we're teaming up with Amazon Home Services to get your place looking good.
Oh, my gosh. Now it's go time.
We are one of the first corporations in the Capital Region to make such a major investment in housing affordability. Crystal House will be affordable for the next 99 years. Means after I'm here, as my children are here.
We converted a warehouse to a test lab in 15 days. This has never been done before. I wanna save lives.
I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just wanted to be able to offer different products that were close to my heart. We decided to go with Amazon as a way to expose our product. It is easier for people to find us there, and then being able to ship worldwide without all of the hassle. As a small business, it was everything.
One day, I got an email saying, "Hey, there's this new program that's gonna take you from wherever you are now to being a software development engineer.
You gotta have the right people. You know, we disproportionately indexed Amazon in hiring builders. People who understand that launch is the starting line and not the finish line.
Good morning, everyone. I am Brian Olsavsky, the company's Chief Financial Officer. I'll be giving a recap of our 2020 financial results and business highlights, which will be followed by presentations from Beth Galetti, our SVP of People Experience and Technology, Alicia Boler Davis, our Vice President of Global Customer Fulfillment, and Alice Shobe, our Director of Amazon in the Community. This will be followed by an investor Q&A with our CEO, Jeff Bezos. Let's start with our financial results for 2020. Sales were $386 billion, which is up 38% year-over-year, or 37% excluding foreign exchange. Beginning with the start of the pandemic in the first quarter of last year, we saw higher-than-expected demand across many of our products and service offerings.
In particular, we saw strong Prime member engagement and demand as people stayed at home. We'll discuss this engagement with Prime benefits in more detail a bit later in my presentation. Here we see the 2020 sales and sales growth by business segment. AWS revenues grew to $45 billion, up 30% year-over-year. North America revenues grew to $236 billion, up 38% year-over-year. International revenue grew to $104 billion, up 40% year-over-year, or 38% on an FX- neutral basis. In 2020, operating income was $23 billion, up 57% year-over-year, or 54% excluding the impact of foreign exchange. Operating margin for the year was 5.9%, compared to 5.2% in 2019.
As demand remained strong throughout the year, the additional volume leverage from higher customer orders helped us to achieve strong operating margins despite higher operating costs. Cash flow is our most important financial output metric. Let's first look at operating cash flow, which represents cash generated by the businesses before factoring in capital investments. For 2020, operating cash flow was $66 billion, up 72% year-over-year. Tailwinds to this number include strong top-line growth and profitability, and working capital efficiency. Free cash flow is what remains after we invest in capital expenditures. We have three cash flow measures, and I will focus on the third measure, which is free cash flow after taking into account our cash CapEx, equipment acquired under finance leases, and principal repayments of financing obligations.
For reconciliation of our free cash flow to GAAP, see our annual reports filed on Form 10-K. In 2020, this free cash flow was $21 billion, up 72% year-over-year. Our primary financial goal remains investing to generate long-term free cash flow and a healthy return on this invested capital. This slide shows the five-year trend in capital investments. In 2020, we invested over $55 billion. We continue to invest meaningfully to support the growth we are seeing across our businesses. In particular, last year was a big year for our fulfillment and transportation network. We grew our global network square footage by about 50% year-over-year. We also continue to invest in technology infrastructure capacity, primarily to support the growing demand from AWS customers, including demand from Amazon's global businesses.
2020 was also a huge hiring year. We welcomed more people to the Amazon family than in any other year of our history. We're proud that more than 500,000 people chose to take new jobs with us, and we're committed to keeping these employees safe while also safely delivering for customers. Last year, we incurred more than eleven and a half billion dollars in COVID-related operating costs, which included more than two and a half billion in bonus pay for our employees. Now I'll briefly touch on a few of our businesses, starting with Prime. Prime recently celebrated its sixteenth birthday, and our Prime program remains core to our vision of being Earth's most customer-centric company. We saw strong Prime member engagement throughout the year across our growing catalog of Prime benefits.
We are continuing to innovate and invest in fast, free, and convenient delivery for our customers. In the U.S., same-day delivery in as fast as five hours is free on orders over $35 on over 3 million items in select cities. This is in addition to free same-day delivery on millions of items in thousands of cities and towns across 47 major U.S. metropolitan areas. Plus, over 10 million items are available for free one-day delivery coast- to- coast in the United States. These efforts are powered by Amazon's last-mile network of delivery driver partners, small businesses creating tens of thousands of new jobs across the country. Throughout 2020, Prime's fast, free, and convenient delivery was critically important to our customers. Prime members shopped with greater frequency and across more categories than before the pandemic. They also increased engagement with other Prime benefits, including Prime Video.
Prime members around the world are watching Prime Video more than ever before, including critically acclaimed original shows and movies. Over the past four quarters, Prime Video streaming hours were up over 70% year-over-year. We're also continuing to expand our roster of live sports content and are excited to partner with the National Football League to be the exclusive home of NFL Thursday Night Football beginning in 2022. Prime's grocery offering also saw tremendous growth last year, particularly as people spent more of their time at home. Our team stepped up to meet this demand, growing two-hour delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market to more than 5,000 cities and towns in the U.S. and expanding one-hour pickup to all U.S. Whole Foods Market stores.
Third-party sellers have long been an important contributor to the Prime offering, and they also stepped up in 2020 to serve customers during an unprecedented year. Seller sales made up nearly 60% of our total retail sales last year, while continuing to grow meaningfully faster than our first-party business. The vast majority of sellers are small and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs for short. Last year, more than 1.9 million SMBs sold on Amazon. Consumers benefit when SMBs succeed. That's why we continue to double down on the success of our sellers. Last year, we invested more than $18 billion in tools, services, and infrastructure to help sellers grow their businesses, and we're not done. Our teams are continuing to work hard to bring new tools and services to help sellers build their brands.
The growth in our consumer business could not have been possible without our dynamic tech infrastructure, powered and supported by AWS. As I mentioned earlier, AWS grew 30% last year and exited 2020 as a $50 billion-plus annualized run rate revenue business. That said, we are still in the early stages of sizable enterprise and public sector adoption, and we're investing and innovating to meet that opportunity. One area to highlight is AWS's expanding geographic footprint, bringing the benefits of the cloud to more customers around the world. This is a map of AWS's global infrastructure footprint. Each of these dots is an AWS region, which consists of multiple data centers. In the first five years of AWS's history, we opened up four regions. Since then, you can see how we've worked to get closer to our customers.
Today, we offer 25 regions around the world, with more regions coming soon. In addition to our global footprint, AWS offers incredible breadth of functionality for customers. Over the past year, we have also seen the power of the cloud and its ability to help businesses scale. When faced with unexpected disruption and challenges, it was critical that organizations of all sizes had the flexibility to adjust quickly. Customers shown here are good examples of how cloud technology supported tremendous demand during the pandemic. Customers in the healthcare industry, like Moderna, used AWS technology to develop a COVID vaccine. For research, all of Moderna's algorithms rely on computational power from AWS. Moderna also utilized AWS's machine learning services for the vaccine's design engineering. This helped Moderna develop the vaccine in a record 42 days when it normally can take 20 months.
Customers like Netflix and Zoom were able to quickly adapt to unprecedented global demand, scaling to serve hundreds of millions of end users in a matter of weeks. Similar to companies like Zoom and Netflix, our Alexa and Devices teams also saw stepped-up engagement last year and worked hard to help people adjust to limited mobility with a focus on enriching our customers' lives through new and even more useful inventions. Last year, we launched more than 250 devices, features, and services across 12 countries, including new devices from Echo and Alexa, Fire TV, and Ring. We're seeing higher usage of our devices and services, particularly as customers look to stay connected, healthy, informed, and entertained. Let's take a look at how the team's work made life during the pandemic a little more enjoyable for our customers.
Go over there and look in there. All right. Go.
Alexa, please yodel.
Kitty, kitty. Wanna say hi to Kitty?
Oh, hello, Kitty. Alexa, you're my best friend.
You have one minute left on your naughty corner ban, boy Tony.
Find Little Mermaid.
No.
Open Bamboo Math.
What is the meaning of apogees?
What's 475 times 300?
School's over.
Well done.
Been using my tablet to attend following online workout videos.
I see firsthand how this device is helping our students.
My name is Rose. I'm gonna be your nurse today.
I'm okay for now. They're able to contact the patient directly, get a lot more done. This is the first time in my life I've ever been alone. It gives me a peace of mind. The security of knowing that mom is just a voice command away, that's really great. Alexa.
Alexa.
Alexa. Alexa. Alexa, I love you.
Let me close by thanking our customers, including the more than 200 million Prime members around the world, for your continued business and support. A special thank you to our dedicated employees. In a year that was anything but normal, you rose to the challenge of serving our customers every day. Now I'd like to introduce Beth Galetti, our Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology.
Thanks, Brian. I'm thrilled to be here today and speak to shareholders from around the world. 2020 was a challenging year in so many ways. We saw a global pandemic disrupting our normal lives. In the U.S., we were also faced with a long-overdue reckoning with racial inequality that forced all of us to examine our own actions. Amazon was not immune to either of those. What happens in the world affects us as a company. We need to rise to the challenge. With COVID-19, millions of people around the world lost their jobs. Thanks to the support of our customers, at Amazon, we were able to offer jobs to those in need of financial support, either permanent positions or just temporary roles.
Last year alone, we hired 500,000 people, and Amazon became an employment beacon in many communities, offering good-paying, full-benefit jobs to hundreds of thousands of families. 45% of the people who joined Amazon's operations network in the U.S. last year were unemployed. We're on a journey to make Amazon Earth's best employer, and we are proud of what we offer to our employees: competitive pay, comprehensive benefits, and a safe and inclusive workplace. In the U.S., all of our jobs come with a starting pay of at least $15 per hour, twice the federal minimum wage. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us how the job market can be disrupted almost overnight. Millions of people working in fields like hospitality, travel, and many others were posed with the challenge to reinvent their careers. Upskilling the American workforce is now more important than ever, and we are committed to do our part.
For those who don't work at Amazon, we are providing free skills training in cloud computing to 29 million people around the world through AWS. For our own employees, we are investing $700 million to upskill 100,000 Amazonians into higher-paying, in-demand jobs in their communities by 2025. Last year alone, more than 15,000 employees went through our programs. These programs are life-changing, and I would like to share with you the story of Della Aikins, one of our employees in Indiana.
I needed something that was challenging, something that I could continue to learn and improve on. I love working on vehicles or anything I can get my hands on that I can try to tinker with, figure out how it works. Seven years ago, I got hired on by Amazon, and I knew it was for me. I started an apprenticeship at Amazon, where we're being taught how to repair, troubleshoot/diagnose any problems on any piece of equipment at any site. I love working with my hands, so it was a game-changer. They're not only paying for the education we're getting, they're paying while we're there. They were willing to train you from zero all the way through. They are setting us up for success in every way. This program has changed my life.
At Amazon, we are relentlessly focused on issues that affect our customers and our employees. In 2020, we set and met goals to double the representation of Black directors and vice presidents, launch inclusion training for all Amazonians, and remove racially insensitive language in our tech documentation. We also donated more than $18 million to organizations focused on racial justice and updated public-facing company positions to reflect our commitment to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear. The most important work we did in 2020 was less visible. We spent several months diving deep into how we hire, develop, and promote employees, and we have set new 2021 goals focused on increasing diversity in our hiring, building the most inclusive work environment that we can, and ensuring equitable access for all.
We've also increased the amount and specificity of the data we share publicly. Our data shows us that there's more work to do, but also demonstrates year-over-year progress. These initiatives represent the next step in Amazon's diversity, equity, and inclusion journey, not the final destination. It will take time and consistent focus to get where we want to be. We're proud that Amazon is a company that does more than just create jobs for computer scientists and people with advanced degrees. We create jobs for people of all backgrounds. We see ourselves as an engine of opportunity for many communities in the U.S. and around the world. You, our investors, should expect us to continue leading on wages, benefits, and upskilling opportunities for our employees. We are not done inventing in this area.
Thank you for joining us today, and let me introduce you to Alicia Boler Davis, our Vice President of Global Customer Fulfillment.
Thank you, Beth. It's an honor to be here today to speak with shareholders from around the world. As our investor relations team informs me, many of you have believed in Amazon since the very beginning. I'm a relatively new Amazonian. I started in 2019 after spending more than 20 years at General Motors. I've been an Amazon customer for many years, and my family and I are very active Prime shoppers. Coming to Amazon as a senior leader was an opportunity to work in what I believe to be the world's most customer-centric company, and one which I constantly use as the customer experience benchmark before coming here. Today, my focus encompasses the physical infrastructure of fulfilling orders, our fulfillment centers, leveraging technology, sustainability, and how we think about our presence as part of the fabric of our communities.
To run it all would not be possible without people. As Jeff said in our shareholder letter this year, we have always wanted to be Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company. We won't change that. It's what's got us here. I am committing us to an addition. We're going to be Earth's Best Employer and Earth's Safest Place to Work. Making Amazon Earth's Best Employer and Safest Place to Work is a North Star for us, and one I am personally committed to as I dive deep into our operations every day. We are committed to the safety of our employees, to zero injuries. We want people to go home the same way they came in. We're focused on managing and preventing work-related musculoskeletal disorders or repetitive stress injuries, our largest category of workplace injuries.
We will draw on expertise in innovation and technology and collaborate with proven thought leaders and scientists. One program that we are proud of is WorkingW ell, which utilizes scientifically proven physical and mental activities to help recharge and re-energize the body, and ultimately reduce the risk of injuries. It's part of our DNA to put ourselves in others' shoes in order to think about how we can make things even better and to invent and improve things. There are things to improve. Fast growth like we've had, adding 500,000 people across operations in 2020, means what got us here might not get us where we want to go. It's humbling to be in an environment where there are so many people around you who are curious and finding solutions to do better.
What I see in our operations business is a spirit of caring, a spirit of teamwork, and a company committed to doing the right thing by its employees. Do we have work to do to take feedback, innovate, iterate, and make improvements? Of course, we do. Ours is a dynamic, fast-growth business. It's important to us that our workplace is safe, inclusive, and responsive to employees, communities, and customers. While it may be easy for critics to paint in broad brushstrokes an image of a cold-hearted employer and negative working conditions, the reality is very different. In fact, 94% of employees say they would recommend Amazon to a friend as a place to work. At no time has that been more apparent to me than during COVID-19.
We prioritize the safety of our employees and customers above all else, redeployed more than 3,000 health and safety experts, and innovated in our technology arenas to implement solutions for COVID safety. In 2021, we'll invest more than $300 million into safety projects, including an initial $66 million to create technology that will help prevent collisions of forklifts and other types of industrial vehicles. During the pandemic, what made me proud to be an Amazonian was seeing the commitment our most senior leaders had in problem-solving for our employees. We had daily calls, spent hours reviewing and changing processes and protocols, took steps to reduce capacity, and led with safety first. During an uncertain and unpredictable period, we never lost sight of our employees and ensuring their safety and trust in Amazon. Earth's best employer is a big goal.
The truth is, in many communities where we operate, the options for employment are limited. We offer good jobs, great pay, and comprehensive benefits. Today, the majority of our operations employees earn more than $16 per hour, and in fulfillment and transportation, an average starting pay of $17 per hour. In addition to comprehensive benefits, it's a robust total compensation package for people whom, for many, this is their first job out of high school, the first time they've had benefits through their employer, or alternatively, offers them a way to explore another career if they've been furloughed or want to try something new. When Amazon comes to town, we create a ripple effect. We aim to infuse the community with resources, infrastructure investments, opportunities for people to start local businesses, and breathe life into towns once passed over by progress.
With Amazon's local donations to schools, STEM education, food banks, and local causes, combined with the strength of its employee volunteers, communities are benefited in broader ways too. I'm proud to be at the helm of Amazon operations during one of the most critical stages of being able to serve customers around the world, working alongside the team that delivers every day and keeping them safe. Thank you again for joining us today. I'd like to introduce Alice Shobe, director of Amazon in the Community.
Thanks, Alicia, and hello, everyone. I spent the first 25 years of my career working in social sector jobs in city planning, community development, and working to end homelessness. While making the decision to join Amazon in 2017, I considered the ways I could continue my community impact at a large company. Did Amazon have unique levers that could truly alter the trajectory of people's lives? Could Amazon make stronger, more equitable communities? Was Amazon as committed as I am to this work? The answer has been a resounding yes. Amazon in the Community was created in 2017 to leverage Amazon's scale for good. With Amazon's bias for action and a culture built around solving what others might say are impossible problems, my team takes a different, more hands-on approach to what is traditionally known as corporate philanthropy.
At a high level, we're focused on addressing inequities so all young people have the opportunities to thrive. For that reason, we primarily serve students who lack opportunities and communities that are underserved. We do this through both long-term and what we call Right Now Needs programs. Our Right Now Needs programs include increasing access to food and basic goods for children and their families. For example, our community delivery team partners with organizations to deliver groceries and prepackaged meals free of charge directly to the doorsteps of people who need them. Using Amazon's network of delivery service partners, we've delivered more than 12 million meals to families, seniors, and schoolchildren around the world. We've also delivered thousands of laptops to low-income students to support distance learning.
Leveraging Amazon's vast operations and logistics network, as well as our technologies, our disaster relief program provides rapid support to fight large-scale natural disasters. Recently, we donated and delivered over 1 million bottles of water and thousands of items such as flashlights, tents, and search and rescue equipment during the winter storm crises in Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. Shifting to our longer-term programs, we have Amazon Future Engineer and the Housing Equity Fund. Amazon Future Engineer is Amazon's computer science education program for students in schools who lack resources and inspiring programs. This past year, we expanded Amazon Future Engineer to France and Canada. We now reach more than 1 million students around the world each year.
Launched in January 2021, the Housing Equity Fund is our more than $2 billion commitment to preserve and create 20,000 affordable housing units for moderate to low-income families in communities we call home. Residents gain easy access to transportation, schools, jobs, and services, ultimately creating more equitable neighborhoods. Our first investments include below-market loans in our headquarters in Virginia and Washington State. We also give grants to minority-led organizations and to government partners not traditionally involved in affordable housing development, such as transit agencies and school districts. We'll have more to share on this in coming months. Our investments are intrinsically linked. Students who have stable housing and enough to eat thrive in school. Young people with access to computer science education are better set up for success as they enter the workforce. Communities hit by a natural disaster and given aid and supplies are able to recover.
Together, these programs enable us to deliver on our commitment to leverage our scale for good and make significant contributions to communities around the world. I can't do justice in conveying that impact, so I'll let our partners and recipients tell you in their own words.
The Amazon Future Engineer program is really a game-changer .
Oh, oh. Thank you, Amazon. Woo. Oh, it's Pharrell.
Good to see you guys. How's everybody doing?
Oh, I'm a little starstruck.
Your focus needs to be creating a difference.
Thanks, Alice. I would now like to introduce Jeff Bezos, who will address questions we have received pursuant to the meeting rules of conduct.
Hello. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. I'd like to start by thanking our shareholders. Many of you have stayed with us through good times and bad. Thank you for believing in our long-term approach, the one we described in our original 1997 letter. I wanna thank our employees also, and I wanna welcome the 500,000 new Amazonians who joined us during 2020 to help us deliver products to customers. We're incredibly glad to welcome you and are grateful for your work. Help us meet all the increased demand that we've seen from customers over the past year. I want our hundreds of thousands of frontline employees to know just how seriously we take your health and safety.
In the same way we set out to be Earth's most customer-centric company, we're determined to be Earth's best employer and Earth's safest place to work. We have a large team of people in our worldwide operations network who, for years, have been working hard to provide a safe workplace, and this vision will help push us even further. Amazon is a very inventive company, and we're gonna apply our culture of invention to improve employee safety even further. As with our $15 minimum wage, this initiative is gonna have influence across the entire retail and logistics industry. We're excited about this, nothing is going to stop us. I'd also like to thank our selling partners, the 1.9 million small and medium-sized businesses that sell in our store and make up close to 60% of Amazon's sales.
20 years ago, we took what was at the time a gigantic risk by opening our store to third-party sellers. The risk worked out well for us, for our selling partners, and most importantly, it worked out really well for customers. We've worked incredibly hard to build the very best tools and services to help small businesses sell online, and I promise you that we will keep inventing for you in that way. Finally, thank you to each of our customers. Without you choosing us, we could do none of these other things. We wouldn't be able to create hundreds of thousands of jobs around the world. We wouldn't be able to invent on behalf of sellers or to invest in initiatives like The Climate Pledge or the Amazon Housing Equity Fund. Long-term thinking is the magic ingredient that aligns the interests of all these different stakeholders.
We talked about our long-term approach in our 1997 shareholder letter. It remains the same today. With that, I'd be happy to take questions.
Thanks, Jeff. We'll now move to our first question. Are you concerned that all of the big attainable ideas have been realized by Amazon, and innovation will get harder from here?
Thank you. In the early 2000s, I used to get this question frequently, even though Amazon was really still a very young company at that point. In my 2002 shareholder letter, I addressed that question head-on. I said that I thought there was more innovation ahead of us than behind us. There's no doubt in my mind that that is still true. We see great innovation happening in our long-established businesses. We continue to add Prime benefits, for example. Prime prescription savings have already helped Prime members save millions of dollars on prescription meds, even when paying without insurance. Alexa has rolled out new features, including music sharing. She shares songs with friends and family with who are Alexa contacts.
As Prime Video turns just 10 years old, we have over 175 million Prime members who've streamed shows and movies in the past year, and streaming hours have grown 70% year-over-year. If you saw this morning's announcement, we're looking forward to reimagining and developing the deep catalog of MGM. I'm incredibly excited about the inventions in our new businesses, too. Take physical stores. "Our 'Just Walk Out' technology removes one of the biggest points of friction from in-person shopping." Nobody likes to wait in line. You may already have experienced Just Walk Out technology at an Amazon Go store. I hope you have. We're thrilled to be offering it to other retailers via licensing agreements. That's already happening at the airport in stores like Hudson News and Cibo Express Gourmet Markets. We're continuing to expand our use of Scout.
That's our fully electric autonomous delivery vehicle. If you haven't seen Scout, it's about the size of a small cooler on wheels, and it rolls down the sidewalk at a walking pace. Since its launch, Scout has delivered tens of thousands of packages to customers, and we're continuing to roll it out to new communities across the U.S. We're also expanding another new business, Amazon Care, which offers immediate access to high-quality medical care in person or virtually to millions of individuals and families across all 50 U.S. states. Companies of all sizes, including Amazon's own workforce, will be able to access Amazon Care, and we're gonna boost workplace benefits for employees nationwide. We're gonna invest more than $10 billion in Project Kuiper. This is a system that's designed to increase bandwidth with a constellation of 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit .
Kuiper will deliver high-speed and low-latency broadband, especially valuable to unserved and underserved communities across the world. Let me assure you, I can guarantee you that none of these ideas are guaranteed to work. All of them are gigantic investments, and they're all risks. Can I stand here and tell you that our $10 billion investment in Kuiper will generate returns on invested capital? I can't. I believe it will, and we're working hard to ensure that's the case. The only way to get above-average returns is to take risks, and many of them will not pay off. Our whole history as a company is about taking risks, many of which have failed and many of which will fail. We'll continue to take big risks. It's a huge part of what has made Amazon successful.
I believe we couldn't be better positioned for the future, and the key is to maintain the heart of a startup. Thank you for the question.
Congratulations on your plans to acquire MGM. Can you explain the strategic rationale for the deal and what it means for Amazon's Prime Video business and Prime members?
We're really excited about MGM. MGM has almost a century of filmmaking history and a deep catalog of over 4,000 different titles, including the James Bond films, Creed, Thelma & Louise, Raging Bull, RoboCop, Tomb Raider. All these films and over 17,000 TV shows, including things like The Handmaid's Tale, Vikings, Fargo, have collectively won more than 180 Academy Awards and 100 Emmys. The acquisition's thesis here is really very simple. MGM has a vast, deep catalog of much-beloved intellectual property. With the talented people at MGM and the talented people at Amazon Studios, we can reimagine and develop that IP for the 21st century. It's gonna be a lot of fun work, and people who love stories are gonna be the big beneficiaries. Thank you.
What do you say to critics who think Amazon is too big or too powerful?
I say we face intense competition from well-established companies everywhere we do business in every industry. The retail industry is thriving. Consumers can shop at dozens of large national retailers, hundreds of regional retailers, hundreds of thousands of small retailers, both online and in-store . It's a very healthy industry. It's far from a winner-take-all situation. We're still a small fraction of retail. If an industry is competitive, you should be able to find small, successful, fast-growing competitors. Think about mobile phone operating systems. Can you think of any successful, small, fast-growing mobile phone operating systems? Where are they? Name one. They do not exist. In contrast, there are many successful, small, fast-growing retailers that are doing incredibly well selling online. Some aren't even that small. They're multi-billion dollar companies. The IT industry, too, of course, is thriving.
We face competition from well-established companies like Google, Oracle, and Microsoft, and from new, incredibly successful upstarts doing a great job and growing incredibly quickly like Snowflake and Twilio. Of course, we recognize that with success comes scrutiny, and we welcome it. Our goals are in line with goals of competition, low prices, wide selection, convenience, and ever-improving innovation and risk-taking. We welcome the scrutiny. Thank you for the question.
Could you please share data and comments on how the company provides wages and healthcare that enable your fulfillment center employees to make a living and stay healthy?
Yes, thank you. Amazon is a leader when it comes to wages, world-class benefits, and upskilling opportunities. Almost three years ago, when we set a $15 minimum wage, we did so because we wanted to lead on wages and not just run with the pack. A recent research paper by economists at the University of California , Brandeis, analyzed the impact of our decision to raise our minimum starting pay to $15. Their assessment reflects exactly what we've heard from our employees and their families and the communities that they live in, which is that our increase in the starting wage boosted local economies across the country by benefiting not only our employees, but also other workers in different companies in the same communities.
The study showed that our pay raise resulted in a 4.7% increase in the average hourly wage among other employers in the same labor market. In 2020, we created 500,000 jobs around the world. We announced plans recently to hire 75,000 people in our fulfillment and logistics networks across the U.S. and Canada. These new roles offer an average starting pay of over $17 an hour, plus sign-on bonuses of up to $1,000. That industry-leading compensation I'm talking about is in addition to our comprehensive benefits, which include healthcare coverage from day one, world-class parental leave, ways to save for the future, like 401(k) retirement plans, and other resources to help improve health and well-being. Employees also have access to upskilling programs like Career Choice, the Amazon Technical Academy, and the Amazon Technical Apprenticeship.
We are determined to be Earth's best employer and Earth's safest place to work. We're gonna invest more than $300 million in safety projects in 2021. Let me give you an example. You heard a little bit about this from Alicia. Musculoskeletal disorders make up about 40% of work-related injuries at Amazon. These injuries are commonplace industry-wide, and they include things like sprains and strains, often caused by repetitive motions. We wanna lead on building industry-wide solutions here, the same way we led on the 15-dollar minimum wage. Our increased attention to early MSD prevention is already working. From 2019 to 2020, overall MSDs decreased by 32%, and MSDs resulting in time away from work decreased by more than half. We know, and we've seen it with the 15-dollar minimum wage, where we lead, others will follow.
Our global operations are led by a team of literally thousands of managers around the world. These managers are people who care deeply about the safety and well-being of our associates, and they always have. I'm proud of the work that these teams do, and you can count on us to succeed on the vision of Earth's best employer and Earth's safest place to work. Thank you for the question.
Could you please provide shareholders with an update on Amazon's progress addressing climate change and sustainability issues?
Yes. Thank you. I'm proud of the work our teams are doing to combat climate change. The Climate Pledge, which we co-founded with Christiana Figueres, calls on signatories to be net zero carbon across their businesses by 2040, a full decade ahead of the Paris Agreement's goal of 2050, and we're making huge progress. So far, we've welcomed over 100 companies to the Climate Pledge. Companies included including Heineken, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Unilever, Visa. Collectively, signatories to the Climate Pledge now represent over $1.4 trillion in global annual revenue and over 5 million employees. Signatories are joining at a rapid pace, and that sends an important signal to the market that there's going to be very high demand for products and services that help reduce carbon emissions. No company can do this alone.
We have to work together. We're also continuing to make progress on our path to powering all of our businesses with 100% renewable energy by 2025, which is five years ahead of our original goal of 2030. We've announced a total of 206 renewable energy projects globally, including 71 utility-scale wind and solar projects and 135 rooftop solar installations at our facilities around the world. We are now the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world. In Europe alone, we're investing in more than 2.5 GW of renewable energy capacity, enough to power more than 2 million homes a year. It's important to remember that online shopping is inherently better for the environment than shopping in stores.
Our research shows that e-commerce is the lowest carbon way to get items from a manufacturing site to a customer's front door. We're committed to continuing to make shopping with Amazon even more sustainable. On a personal note, I'm passionate about this topic. In 2020, I launched the Bezos Earth Fund, a $10 billion philanthropic commitment to fund scientists, activists, and NGOs in their efforts to zero out carbon and protect the natural world. This is the decisive decade for climate change. The coming decade, we'll need to see radical changes in the way we power our activities, the way we grow our food, construct our buildings, the way we manufacture our products, manage our land, and the way we transport our goods. These transitions are possible, they are affordable, they will lead to more jobs, healthier citizens, and more fairness and justice.
They're gonna need bold actions from all of us, from companies, from governments, from citizens. It's gonna take bold actions from everyone. Thank you.
Since groceries are a commodity, how could you incentivize someone like me to change my grocery shopping habits and try using Amazon Go?
All I have to do is get you to try it. Once you try it, you'll love it. It's delightful. Amazon Go Grocery is a different format from what you're used to. It is the very first grocery store to offer Just Walk Out shopping. We consistently hear from customers how much they love the magical shopping experience of just walking out. Customers are delighted by the speed of taking what they want and leaving. It saves them time, and they get the same low prices they've come to expect from Amazon. More broadly, across online and offline customer experiences, grocery is one of our fastest-growing categories and continues to be a big priority for Amazon because it's something that customers care deeply about.
You can expect us to keep innovating to serve you better wherever you want to shop, whether that's in stores or through grocery delivery or pickup, and I very much look forward to you never waiting in line again. Thank you.
Thanks, Jeff. This will be the last question. In your book Invent and Wander, you stated that as of 2014, Amazon's three big ideas were Marketplace, Prime, and AWS. As of today, are Amazon's big ideas the same, or would a fourth or fifth idea be added to these three?
This is a great question. Thank you. The three pillars of our business are still AWS, Marketplace, and Prime. The way we use the term pillar, is a very high standard to declare something a pillar. It has to have at least four characteristics. Customers have to love it. It has to be able to grow to a very large size. It has to have strong returns on capital, and it has to be durable in time, with the potential to endure for decades. With those high standards, do we have a 4th or 5th pillar? In my opinion, it would be premature to declare anything a 4th or 5th pillar at this time. We do have a lot of contenders. Just to mention a couple, you can think of things like Amazon Alexa and Amazon Studios, and there are many more.
You can be sure of one thing, we will be working very hard to turn these things into our next pillars. Thank you. In closing, let me just say a couple of things. This is my last shareholder meeting as Amazon CEO. I'm very excited to move into the Executive Chair role, where I'll focus my energies and attention on new products and on early initiatives. On July 5, Andy Jassy will become the CEO of Amazon. We chose that date because it's a sentimental one for me. It's the date that Amazon was incorporated in 1994, exactly 27 years ago. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He's going to be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.
He has the highest of high standards. I guarantee that Andy will never let the universe make us typical. He has the energy needed to keep alive in us what has made us special. While it won't be easy, I do predict Andy will also find it satisfying and oftentimes fun. Before we close, I wanna take a moment to again say thank you. First, to employees everywhere, it's been my greatest honor to have worked with you as CEO. I'm excited to continue to work alongside you as Executive Chair. I also want to thank share holders. Many of you have been with us from the start. You've thought long-term along with us all these years. Thank you for continuing to have faith in Amazon. Finally, I wanna thank customers.
We could not do this without you, and I want you to know that Amazon will continue to do everything in our power to deliver and invent the greatest products and services for you. Thank you very much.