Late last year, I made my first round of grants to 16 organizations working on innovative and needle-moving solutions. The last few of Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters from 2015 to 2021. This requires sustained investment in systems and infrastructure to support outstanding customer convenience, selection, and service while we grow. Earlier this week, after successfully filling those roles, we announced we were creating another 75,000 jobs to respond to customer demand. We create value for them. The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. We are all taught to be yourself. What Im really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. (Special thanks go to the good people that maintain the free version of PDF Split and Merge which I used to compile this, and to whomever already did the work for letters from 1997 2012 that I started with. Adding AWS and consumer together gives us total customer value creation in 2020 of $164 billion. Who are they? Fortunately for everyone else, Jeff Bezos has detailed and outlined his approach to risk and his growth strategies in his annual letters to Amazon's shareholders. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets. We increased our minimum wage through the end of April by $2 per hour in the U.S., $2 per hour in Canada, 2 per hour in the UK, and 2 per hour in many European countries. We have 62 utility-scale wind and solar projects and 125 solar rooftops on fulfillment and sort centers around the globe. Well do consumers first. Research suggests the typical physical store trip takes about an hour. This strategy is not without risk: it requires serious investment and crisp execution against established franchise leaders. Amazon.coms employee base grew from 158 to 614, and we significantly strengthened our management team. If each group had an income statement representing their interactions with Amazon, the numbers above would be the bottom lines from those income statements. From 2019 to 2020, overall MSDs decreased by 32%, and MSDs resulting in time away from work decreased by more than half. We create jobs for people who never got that advantage. If we want to be Earths Best Employer, we shouldnt settle for 94% of employees saying they would recommend Amazon to a friend as a place to work. Our goal remains to continue to solidify and extend our brand and customer base. His 1997 Letter To Shareholders is still a playbook for building a great . We have more than 200 million Prime members worldwide. Amazon Future Engineer currently funds Introduction to Computer Science and AP Computer Science classes for more than 2,000 schools in underserved communities across the country. We have always wanted to be Earths Most Customer-Centric Company. To our shareowners: One thing we've learned from the COVID-19 crisis is how important Amazon has become to our customers. Dont let it happen. Amazonians are working around the clock to get necessary supplies delivered directly to the doorsteps of people who need them. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets. Take a look at these numbers: 1999 3% 2000 3% 2001 6% 2002 17% 2003 22% 2004 25% 2005 28% 2006 28% 2007 29% 2008 30% 2009 31% 2010 34% Theyre pension funds, universities, and 401(k)s, and theyre Mary and Larry, who sent me this note out of the blue just as I was sitting down to write this shareholder letter: I am approached with similar stories all the time. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture, particularly in a business incurring net losses. We have temporarily closed Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star, and Amazon Pop Up stores because they dont sell essential products, and we offered associates from those closed stores the opportunity to continue working in other parts of Amazon. We terminate the employment of less than 2.6% of employees due to their inability to perform their jobs (and that number was even lower in 2020 because of operational impacts of COVID-19). We are incredibly fortunate to have this group of dedicated employees whose sacrifices and passion build Amazon.com. Our cash and investment balances at year-end were $125 million, thanks to our initial public offering in May 1997 and our $75 million loan, affording us substantial strategic flexibility. Our goal is to move quickly to solidify and extend our current position while we begin to pursue the online commerce opportunities in other areas. Our scientists developed a model to compare the carbon intensity of ordering Whole Foods Market groceries online versus driving to your nearest Whole Foods Market store. Globally, we support nearly 4 million jobs. From the studies of Jeff Bezos' letters to the shareholders, Steve Anderson and Karen Anderson could drawn 14 principles that were applied by the Amazon's founder that can help any company grow. Its not easy to work here (when I interview people I tell them, You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you cant choose two out of three), but we are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Even in these circumstances, it remains Day 1. The difficult part of this estimation exercise is that the direct cost reduction is the smallest portion of the customer benefit of moving to the cloud. Our cash and investment balances at year-end were $125 million, thanks to our initial public offering in May 1997 and our $75 million loan, affording us substantial strategic flexibility. These things are simply true, as is the reality of climate change. The world wants you to be typical in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Bezos stepped down as CEO to become executive chairman in 2021. Amazon pays up to 95% of tuition and fees toward a certificate or diploma in qualified fields of study, leading to enhanced employment opportunities in high-demand jobs. We first measure ourselves in terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. Money doesnt tell the whole story. Andy is brilliant and has the highest of high standards. But I also know something else: its not the largest part of the value weve created. And were not done leading. Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.coms success. In those reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. It wont be. Accordingly, we want to share with you our fundamental management and decision-making approach so that you, our shareholders, may confirm that it is consistent with your investment philosophy: We arent so bold as to claim that the above is the right investment philosophy, but its ours, and we would be remiss if we werent clear in the approach we have taken and will continue to take. We will share our strategic thought processes with you when we make bold choices (to the extent competitive pressures allow), so that you may evaluate for yourselves whether we are making rational long-term leadership investments. We employ 6,200 safety professionals at Amazon. Our decisions have consistently reflected this focus. From the beginning, our focus has been on offering our customers compelling value. In response to a request from the Los Angeles Unified School District to transition 700,000 students to remote learning, AWS helped establish a call center to field IT questions, provide remote support, and enable staff to answer calls. We regularly sanitize door handles, stairway handrails, lockers, elevator buttons, and touch screens, and disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer are standard across our network. The bigger benefit is the increased speed of software development something that can significantly improve the customers competitiveness and top line. In my upcoming role as Executive Chair, Im going to focus on new initiatives. It remains Day 1. Weve distributed face masks and implemented temperature checks at sites around the world to help protect employees and support staff. Those who test positive could be quarantined and cared for, and everyone who tests negative could re-enter the economy with confidence. To accelerate our response to price-gouging incidents, we created a special communication channel for state attorneys general to quickly and easily escalate consumer complaints to us. They are a prediction of future cash flows discounted back to the present. We plan to meet the pledge, in part, by purchasing 100,000 electric delivery vans from Riviana Michigan-based producer of electric vehicles. Customers can ask, "Alexa, what do I do if I think I have COVID-19?" On the details, we at Amazon are always flexible, but on matters of vision we are stubborn and relentless. Photo: patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images. Its about a basic fact of biology. We are incredibly fortunate to have this group of dedicated employees whose sacrifices and passion build Amazon.com. We now offer customers gift certificates, 1-Click shopping, and vastly more reviews, content, browsing options, and recommendation features. We are not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think its worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn. Lists links to every shareholder letter Jeff Bezos has written. . 2019 Letter to Shareholders. We feel good about what weve done, and even more excited about what we want to do. In terms of audience reach, per Media Metrix, our Web site went from a rank of 90th to within the top 20. The challenges and hurdles we will face to make our long-term vision for Amazon.com a reality are several: aggressive, capable, well-funded competition; considerable growth challenges and execution risk; the risks of product and geographic expansion; and the need for large continuing investments to meet an expanding market opportunity. Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. But, at the same time, its also true that things would often be easier take less energy if we were a little more normal. Summarizing:Shareholders $21BEmployees $91B3P Sellers $25BCustomers $164BTotal $301B. We are collaborating with the World Health Organization, supplying advanced cloud technologies and technical expertise to track the virus, understand the outbreak, and better contain its spread. A small thing: all of the reports are not named consistently. It's been a brutal year for many in the capital markets and certainly for Amazon.com shareholders. This is a relatively easy question to answer because accounting systems are set up to answer it. Business owners marvel at Amazon's success, but don't realize they have the answers right at their fingertips as Bezos . In addition, AWS has been successful in increasing the energy efficiency of its facilities and equipment, for instance by using more efficient evaporative cooling in certain data centers instead of traditional air conditioning.