Amazon officially announced Alexa on the 6th of November 2014 alongside the Echo smart speaker. The first device to feature Alexa was the Amazon Echo developed by Amazon Lab126.
Computer scientist William Tunstall-Pedoe founded the British company Evi in 2005. Amazon acquired Evi in 2012 to obtain the question-to-answer system that would become part of Alexa.
As of 2018, interaction capabilities were available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Hindi. Canada received support for both English and French including a Quebec accent while most recently Alexa launched in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the 7th of December 2021.
By January 2019, Amazon's devices team had sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices globally. This figure represents the total sales count across all models including the Echo Dot and Echo Studio.
On the 25th of February 2025, Amazon introduced Alexa+ powered by generative AI. This version includes Claude models from Anthropic and is free for all Prime members with potential subscription costs between ten and twenty dollars per month.