Amazon recently announced plans to invest 15 billion euros in France. More importantly, on June 4 in London, the American group unveiled a sweeping investment programme to modernise its distribution centres across Europe. The €10 billion package aims to reshape logistics with the launch of an unprecedented fleet of robots, driven by artificial intelligence, alongside the creation of 25,000 jobs across the Continent.

The company used its “Delivering the Future” event to set out this continent-wide strategy. This ambitious, capital-intensive programme is designed to support teams with demanding tasks and to streamline warehouse operations. The centrepiece of this operational overhaul is Proteus. This new generation of autonomous robot dispenses with conventional interfaces in favour of natural-language commands. Circular and low-profile, it slips beneath heavy-load trolleys to move them.

The device is designed to navigate freely across all logistics sites and to handle trolleys weighing up to 400 kilograms. Its roll-out in Europe is officially scheduled for the first half of 2027.

“You tell it what to do,” explained Scott Dresser, vice-president of Amazon Robotics. “It sets the priority, the route and the timing, and becomes your assistant for moving materials.”

European technology deployment

This announcement marks an important milestone, as Amazon’s robotic deployments have mainly been tested and rolled out in the group’s US warehouses. These trials have yielded further innovations.

As for handling storage bins, operations have benefited from new advances with the Stark system. This robotic arm lifts full containers from conveyors and places them on trolleys, once again reducing manual heavy lifting. Amazon’s Spanish subsidiary tested this model in Barcelona ahead of a planned expansion to fifteen European sites by 2027.

Stark joins the Vulcan robot, which complements this network by adding an unprecedented grasping capability. As FashionNetwork explained in March, this robot is equipped with a sense of touch, enabling it to pick a specific product from the storage shelves without damaging it. The aim for Amazon is to be less dependent on ‘pickers’, the employees responsible for picking orders in storage areas. Originally developed at Amazon’s Spokane facilities in the US, this solution now handles complex tasks at the Hamburg centre in Germany.

“Europe is central to how we build our operations for the future,” said Dresser. “The investment we make here, the talent we develop here, the technology we deploy here – this is where the next chapter of innovation is being written.”

Reorganisation and deployment

This race towards robotisation is not without consequences for employment, including within the group’s robotics teams. In March, Amazon cut around 100 jobs in its robotics unit, according to Reuters, following a round of 30,000 job cuts carried out between October and January. At the same time, Amazon is now opening up its logistics sites to bricks-and-mortar retailers wishing to take advantage of its capabilities, marking a significant shift in the company’s storage and shipping strategy.

With Germany, the UK and France as its first international markets, Amazon now has some sixty major logistics centres in Europe. At the end of 2027, a distribution centre is due to open in Ensisheim, in the Haut-Rhin region of France, creating 2,000 jobs. But the group is also banking on smaller units dedicated to rapid delivery. Twenty-five units are due to be launched in Europe this year.

In 2025, Amazon’s revenue reached $716.9 billion. The US market generated $426.3 billion in revenue for the group over the year.