More from All the biggest announcements from Amazon’s September 2023 product launch event

Dave Limp says a superhuman voice assistant is within reach as he takes us through a history of its efforts in the smart home at Amazon’s Fall hardware event. There are nearly a billion devices connected to Alexa today, he says. Yes, mainly for timers and alarms — but also smart home, which he says is up 25 percent year on year.

David Limp’s on stage preparing to announce a whole lot of hardware. There’s the stuff we’re expecting, like a new Echo and Fire TV, and maybe even Alexa powered by generative AI. We’ll see what else gets announced.

Amazon’s 2023 hardware event is about to get started, but if you have a few minutes, you can check out Jen Tuohy’s preview or go back and look at the top products announced last year before the presentation kicks off at 11AM ET.

These events are funny — sometimes it’s an hour-long avalanche of gadgets, where Amazon is like, “this cabinet has Alexa, is that anything?” Other times it’s more measured and thoughtful, Amazon shipping products it thinks people will actually buy. This year, given the way the economy is going and what’s been happening within Amazon’s devices team, I’d bet on the more austere side of things this year. But here’s hoping for a little chaos too.

We’re about a half-hour out from the start of Amazon’s big fall device launch event, and a few of us spent a chunk of our morning on a tour of Amazon’s new headquarters. It’s... a headquarters! But there is a food truck outside that exists just for handing out free bananas, so that’s pretty great. Amazon food truck innovation, y’all.