This article was originally published shortly after Amazon Go launched. In 2026, the news caught up with me: here’s an honest update on what became of the concept.
The Amazon Go concept, as a reminder
Amazon Go was a store with no checkout and no cashier, opened on 22 January 2018 in Seattle. The principle: a mobile app, a scan on entry, ceiling-mounted cameras and sensors tracking every item added to or removed from the cart, and automatic billing on exit, with no queue.
What just happened
Amazon has announced the closure of all of its physical Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores, 72 stores in total (15 Go and 57 Fresh), effective 1 February 2026 (with a 45-day grace period for Californian stores, due to local legal requirements). Some of these locations will be converted into Whole Foods Market stores.
Amazon justifies the decision as follows: the company has certainly seen encouraging signals from its physical formats, but has « not yet found the economic model and the customer experience differentiated enough » to justify a large-scale rollout.
Where Amazon is redirecting its efforts
The group is now focusing on two levers: expanding Whole Foods Market (over 100 new stores planned in the coming years, including the « Daily Shop » format), and same-day delivery of fresh products, already available in more than 2,300 US cities.
What this teaches us
Looking back, my original take still holds on one point: the user experience (zero time at checkout) was genuinely appealing. But the limitations I had identified as early as 2018 (the need for a recent smartphone, excluding part of the customer base less comfortable with technology, imperfect camera reliability) clearly weighed more heavily than expected in the economic equation, to the point where Amazon is simply giving up on the checkout-free physical format altogether, refocusing on what it already masters: delivery logistics and the Whole Foods acquisition.
A useful lesson for any e-commerce brand: an innovative customer experience isn’t enough if the economic model behind it doesn’t scale. Amazon applies the same economic discipline on the marketplace side, as shown by the recent refocus of Vendor Central on its most profitable brands.
Agathe Blaise
Sources: Amazon closes Fresh and Go stores – About Amazon, Amazon is closing its futuristic Go and Fresh stores – Fortune, January 2026.