Some hideous action earlier this year. Amazon.com is now rebounding 36% from its early April lows. People remembering that this company still has a ton going for it. From the resurgence of Amazon Web Services to artificial intelligence, improving efficiency, to the fact that the company reported an excellent set of numbers just two months ago. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Earlier today, I got the chance to speak with Andy Jassy. He's the president and CEO of Amazon right here at the New York Stock Exchange in a pretty wide ranging discussion. Take a look. And you often talk about a Y culture, why we do things. Why do we found out offer books? Why do we do professional reviews? We have individual reviewers. What are the big why's that you're looking at right now?
Oh my gosh. I mean, we're constantly looking at everything, every customer experience we have and asking why can't it be better? So despite the fact that we've made so much progress in getting items to customers so much more quickly in our retail business, we keep asking ourselves, why can't it be faster? You know, a couple of years ago, most people got items 2 to 3 days. Today, most of the items get there in a day or less. We're working on drones, which we think can get it to customers inside of an hour. So, you know, we ask, why can't it be so much easier for customers to do AI and the AWS business? Every single business is a big number of why.
Don't be too hard on yourself. I ordered a smart fast charger yesterday at two and it came at four, so you must be doing something right.
Well, I mean, we have these facilities. They're kind of innovations on our fulfillment network called same day facilities. And they're a different style fulfillment network with fewer floors. And we stock a couple hundred thousand of the top moving SKUs in that facility. And then we hook up delivery direct from that facility. And so we're able to get most items to people in that same day facility within 3 to 5 hours. Two hours. Pretty good.
Now, will I see one day a robot at my door, giving it to me so you can cut it down to an hour and 45 minutes?
Well, you know, first of all, I don't think that you need a robot to be able to cut it down. I think with what we're doing with Prime Air, which is our drones project, which we've made so much progress on in the last couple of years, I actually believe we'll be able to get items to people inside of an hour, and maybe even as quickly as 30 minutes. I do believe over time, you know, as we continue to expand the use of robotics and our fulfillment network, that we will have robots who will help do delivery and transportation for us.
So rural is going to use drone, perhaps robot, to talk to me about rural, because that's something you just announced. Those are people who don't have maybe even a brick and mortar within ten miles.
Yeah. I mean, if you think about the basic prime experience for most customers in any kind of metropolitan area, they're getting most of their items now in a day or so. And then you look at the rural experience. And because we don't have delivery stations and fulfillment centers the same way out in these rural areas, they're getting items in several days so they don't get the full prime experience that people in metropolitan areas do. And at a time when most logistics providers are walking away from rural customers because it's more expensive to serve them out, you know, in those areas, we are increasing our investment. We just announced a $4 billion investment to build delivery stations and fulfillment centers out there, so we can get items to people in a day or two, and they can have the prime experience everybody else has.
And when you do that, though, do you think, well, you know what, we're going to lose money on this, but it's the right thing to do, because sometimes I feel like Project Kuiper is a lose lose money, right thing to do. Or are you going to make money in rural?
Well, I would say two things. Both what we do with rural and what we do with Project Kuiper, I believe, are significant upfront investments, but they're both going to be great for customers and they'll be good for the business down the road. So on the rural side, what we find is, you know, the faster we're able to get items to customers, the better customer experience they have, the more they'll sign up for Prime and customers sign up for Prime. It turns out they end up doing a lot of their shopping with Amazon. So you make that big upfront investment to serve rural customers better, and it comes back over a longer period of time. Kuiper, which is our low Earth orbit satellite that we're building. Remember, there's 400 to 500 million households around the world who don't have broadband connectivity, so they don't get to do business online or entertainment or shopping or education. And so we're building this network. So they actually have that connectivity. And it's going to completely change what's possible for them. Again, it's a really significant upfront capital investment. But it has a lot of the same types of financial characteristics as AWS has, which is it's high capital intensity. It has really good return on invested capital, and we believe that's going to be great for customers and great for Amazon.
