Your Guide to Retail and Consumer Goods at re:Invent 2025

The retail and consumer goods industries are experiencing a transformative shift driven by artificial intelligence and agentic technologies that are fundamentally reshaping how businesses operate and engage with customers. As we move into 2026, retail and consumer goods companies are prioritizing AI-powered solutions with unprecedented investment levels. 80 percent of retailers surveyed plan to increase funding for both artificial intelligence and generative AI, with mean investment increases of 36-38 percent.

This surge in AI adoption is enabling retailers to move beyond transactional operations toward transformational execution of unified retail commerce strategies, where data becomes the crucial backbone for delivering personalized customer experiences regardless of channel. From AI-powered customer service, through the strategic use of agents, to intelligent supply chain orchestration, retailers are leveraging these technologies to automate insights, accelerate product development, and create seamless interactions across all touchpoints.

Simultaneously, the retail and consumer goods landscape is being reshaped by evolving consumer expectations, particularly from Gen Z/Alpha shoppers who demand highly convenient, personalized, and socially responsible experiences. This generational shift is forcing retailers to restructure their core merchandising hierarchies around customer behavior rather than traditional product categories, while investing heavily in technologies that enhance both customer and associate experiences.

The focus on tangible business outcomes is driving steady adoption of industry cloud platforms, with 47 percent of retailers already implementing these solutions to achieve measurable improvements in revenue, profitability, and operational efficiency. As retail CIOs evolve from cost controllers to strategic revenue generators, they’re increasingly responsible for driving digital transformation initiatives that deliver competitive differentiation through cross-functional collaboration and data-driven innovation.

Given these transformative trends and the pressing need for technological advancement, industry leaders are looking for platforms and partnerships that can accelerate their digital transformation journeys by attending industry conferences. This is why we’ve seen AWS re:Invent conference attendance grow exponentially. With thousands of retail and consumer goods executives attending re:Invent, they can discover practical applications of cloud computing and AI advancements while gaining insights into upcoming technology trends. Additionally, re:Invent fosters growth in strategic partnerships necessary to drive business transformation for years to come.

So, how do you get started? Here is a list of sessions that can help you jump-start your transformations, provide exciting topics and talks, and make for a fun and exhilarating conference attendance you’ll remember for years. The following information will help you plan your visit to re:Invent so you can get the most of your time there – and start innovating quickly in 2026.

Learn from your industry peers in breakout sessions:

• IND384– Automate insights and drive innovation with cloud and AI solutions (Featuring: Mondelez and WW Grainger)
• IND383 – Rapidly accelerate product development and launches with AI (Featuring: VF Corporation and Fanatics)
• IND3307 – Drive supply chain innovation using AWS Cloud and AI Solutions (Featuring Sysco and McDonald’s)
• BIZ213– Petco unlocks agentic AI-powered customer service with Amazon Connect
• BIZ214 – Traeger accelerates contact center agent productivity with agentic AI
• IND331– Democratizing Whirlpool’s virtual product development with AWS
• AIM280-S– Building enterprise-ready agentic speech AI pipelines on AWS (sponsored by NVIDIA)

Participate in interactive chalk talk sessions:

• IND327– Sysco’s digital transformation: platform engineering with Amazon Q
• IND330– Voice AI restaurant ordering platform powered by Amazon Nova Sonic
• IND307– Architecting intelligent supply chains with multi-agent orchestration
• IND385– Building AI agents: A scalable framework using Strands and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
• AMZ402– Evaluating AI agents: real-world lessons from Amazon’s agent systems
• AIM379 – Integrating virtual try-on into your ecommerce platforms

Don’t miss these lightning talks, innovation sessions, and keynotes to learn about the latest topics:

• IND386– From UX to AX: MCP servers for AI shopping agents
• HMC204-S– Reinventing the retail edge with YUM! Brands, AWS & Spectro Cloud (sponsored by Spectro Cloud)
• ANT202-S– From kitchen to cloud: How Brinker dishes out data-driven success (sponsored by Teradata)
• INV211 – Behind the curtain: How Amazon’s innovations are powered by AWS

Attend an AWS meet-up to have discuss best practices for retail, consumer goods, and restaurants:

• Building a Data Foundation in an AI-Driven World – Share insights and best practices for building a robust data foundation that powers internal and external AI applications
• Resilient store networks: Powering edge innovation from core to cloud – Meet with AWS experts and customers in retail and restaurants to learn how to modernize store connectivity

And, of course, there are multiple opportunities to have fun from Magic gatherings to the Sports Forum to re:Play.

To get the most of your experience:

• Check out our full attendee guide
• Favorite and reserve session on your re:Invent portal
• Download the app. The app will help you track sessions, find shuttles, and more.
• Pack comfortable shoes! You’ll get in a lot of steps!

We look forward to seeing you soon!