Amazon Prime Video Shakeup: Jay Marine Takes on U.S. Business Oversight as Albert Cheng Shifts to AI-Focused Role

Amazon Prime Video is consolidating its business leadership under Jay Marine, the Amazon veteran who previously headed Prime Video’s global sports and advertising activities. Albert Cheng, who steered the rest of Prime Video’s U.S. operations, will shift to a new role aimed at advancing Amazon’s embrace of AI tools and AI-enhanced services for the studio’s creative partners.

Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, stressed that the consolidation was in keeping with directives from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to flatten and streamline the organization.

In a memo to staff sent Thursday, Hopkins emphasized “the need for us to create bigger roles, flatter orgs and single threaded leaders that can push decision-making down and empower us all to move faster.” And he also pointed to “the lightning-fast speed at which AI is augmenting and accelerating the way we work and ushering in new opportunities to create and distribute entertainment and sports that our customers love.”

The realigned org structure is designed to put us in “even stronger position to deliver faster for customers; and enable us to be even more strategic about the significant bets we will make in the AI space,” Hopkins wrote.

Marine has been with Amazon since 2002, rising through the ranks at the Kindle unit. He spent two years as a special advisor to then-CEO Jeff Bezos. In 2015 he segued to VP of Prime Video for Europe and India. He was promoted to VP and global head of sports and advertising in 2023.

Cheng joined Amazon in 2018 after holding senior business and digital roles at Disney and ABC. He had been chief operating officer of Amazon Studios before his promotion to VP at Prime Video.

News of the Prime Video shuffle was first reported by Deadline.

(Pictured: Albert Cheng)