Six months ago, Daniel Rausch, Amazon's Vice President, Alexa & Echo, told me the company was ready for millions of customers to suddenly start tapping into Alexa's new large-language-model-infused intelligence – and this was before the company really had any hardware that was truly purpose-built to support Alexa+.
That changed this week as Amazon unleashed a slew of new Echo smart speakers, intelligent Show screens, clever Fire TVs, and pen-friendly (and even color-capable) Kindles. When I sat down with Rausch again to take measure of the company's accomplishments, he was ready to celebrate the win.
