When releasing its third-quarter earnings results Thursday (Oct. 29), Amazon said the number of customers using Amazon Pharmacy rose more than 60% from a year earlier and repeat customers rose more than 50%, with three-hour prescription delivery now available in more than 350 cities.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy listed pharmacy among the businesses “progressing encouragingly” alongside grocery, Amazon Leo and Zoox, according to a Thursday press release.
The delivery footprint has been building all year. Amazon added Idaho and Massachusetts to same-day prescription delivery in February and set a target of nearly 4,500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, PYMNTS reported Feb. 11. John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy, said at the time that the company was “removing critical barriers and helping patients start treatment faster.”
Health AI Now Starts Most of Amazon’s Virtual Visits
The pharmacy numbers arrived alongside a shift in how patients reach Amazon in the first place. Health AI, the agent Amazon rolled out to Amazon.com and the Amazon app in March after a January debut inside One Medical, answers health questions, explains lab results, manages prescriptions and connects users with a One Medical clinician by message, video or in person, the PYMNTS report said. Eligible Prime members who use it get free direct message visits for more than 30 common conditions.
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Prakash Bulusu, chief technology officer at Amazon Health Services, and Dr. Andrew Diamond, chief medical officer at Amazon One Medical, wrote in a company blog post at the time that the agent is built to support a patient’s relationship with a provider, not replace it.
The AI agent has become the main entrance. Virtual care visits nearly tripled year over year, “with a majority of those visits now via Health AI,” Amazon said in April when announcing its first-quarter earnings results. Prime includes up to five free virtual care visits.
The GLP-1 Management Program Amazon launched through One Medical in April showed the three pieces working as one, including a $29 message consultation or $49 video visit for a renewal, a One Medical clinician supervising treatment, and Amazon Pharmacy filling the order with same-day delivery, PYMNTS reported.
OpenAI and Perplexity Compete for the Same First Click
Amazon is not alone in treating the health question as the start of a customer relationship. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health in January and said more than 230 million people ask health and wellness questions on ChatGPT each week, PYMNTS reported Jan. 7. Perplexity launched Perplexity Health in March with connectors to Apple Health and electronic health records from more than 1.7 million providers, PYMNTS reported March 25. Neither can write a prescription or deliver it. Amazon’s Health AI hands the question to a clinician who can, and the clinician’s prescription to a pharmacy Amazon owns.
Consumers are already on this path. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Three in 10 Gen Zers and Millennials Use Telehealth. But Paying the Doctor Is Full of Friction” found in June 2025 that more than 60% of consumers in the United States used at least one digital healthcare tool in the past year, and about 30% of millennial and Generation Z patients had their most recent visit remotely.
What Amazon has not said is whether the agent is filling the pharmacy. The Thursday press release reported pharmacy growth, and the first-quarter release reported Health AI’s share of visits. No Amazon disclosure connects the two. The next marker is the same-day delivery buildout.
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