Amazon tests interest-based product discovery as sellers adapt to new fee and logistics rules
Amazon is testing a new discovery feature called Interests AI, which lets shoppers say what they want conversationally and receive a curated product feed built around mood, intent, and real-world context. Analysts say it does not replace keyword search but adds a new browsing dimension, and warn it will soon feed directly into recommendations from Amazon's Rufus assistant.
The feature is being read as Amazon's intent graph in action, rewarding brands whose listings reflect natural, intent-driven language. Sellers are being advised to optimize early, since phrases shoppers enter into Interests represent structured intent signals that could soon redefine ad targeting as well. Brands that wait for the feature to go mainstream risk finding the opportunity already crowded.
In platform competition news, Google and TikTok are rolling out seller-friendly features that contrast with Amazon's more closed approach. Google is piloting Creator Partnerships for YouTube Shorts, letting advertisers discover and promote user-generated content featuring their brand directly in Google Ads. TikTok has launched a CRM tool inside TikTok Shop that lets select sellers message customers directly, a notable departure from Amazon's strict communication limits, and has added custom shipping, return and cancellation windows, and after-sales automation.
Logistics guidance is circulating on avoiding Amazon's inbound placement fees, which apply when sellers send inventory to a single fulfillment center. Key recommendations: follow the five-box rule by shipping at least five identical cartons per item; use the post-pack workflow for less-than-truckload shipments; create separate shipment plans for products with fewer than five units; ship five or more pallets when possible to make optimized splits economical; and never mix hazmat or oversize items with standard products. Sellers should also weigh hidden costs, including transfer delays of up to two to three weeks and reimbursement headaches.
A free break-even calculator for Amazon sellers is making the rounds, letting users compute exact profit margins factoring in return rates, processing fees, coupon discounts and fees, and advertising costs. It supports unlimited pricing and volume simulations, calculates break-even pricing and maximum safe discounts, and exports results, though storage fees are not yet included.
New data on global e-commerce shows Europe is home to the most headquarters of the world's 250 biggest companies, at 95, or 38 percent, slightly ahead of the Americas' 92 and well ahead of Asia's 57. Germany leads Europe with 22, including Otto and Zalando, while the US dominates at the country level with 80 and China concentrates giants like Alibaba in just 17. Yet no European company cracks the global top 10, with Otto Group ranking 19th, and Amazon remains dominant within Europe itself.
Robotics news is moving quickly: a Shanghai factory has begun mass-producing humanoid robots for tasks from sales to heavy transport; Amazon has deployed more than 750,000 robots of eight types across its operations; Google DeepMind introduced Gemini Robotics models for physical-world tasks like folding origami; MIT and NVIDIA unveiled a framework letting users correct robots by gesture in real time, improving task success by 21 percent; Hugging Face released a petabyte-scale self-driving dataset; and Estonian researchers built a robot that weaves its own parts on demand.
Also in the news: thousands of sellers descended on Las Vegas this week for three overlapping conferences with more than 50 satellite events; the Port of Shanghai became the first port in the world to process 5 million containers in a single month this January; and reports cover Temu seller pricing strategy, Facebook Marketplace overtaking Amazon in shopper numbers, slow uptake of Amazon Haul, average US shopper spending of $700 a year on TikTok, and Temu poaching Amazon and Walmart employees.
