Amazon wants to grow its same-day fulfillment network more than tenfold, to over 1,000 buildings by 2031 from roughly 85 now, under a plan codenamed Project Mercury, according to Eugene Kim at Business Insider. Existing sites can sit 90 minutes away by road, and the internal documents call for the new ones to land within 10 straight-line miles of 80% of US Prime subscribers. That goes after Walmart’s proximity advantage, since roughly 90% of Americans already live inside the same 10-mile band around a Walmart or Sam’s Club. Amazon’s three-year operating plan sets aside $6.8 billion for US same-day capacity in 2026 and 2027, and a finance review put the project’s 10-year value at $7.1 billion. A spokesperson said the projections are preliminary and shouldn’t be read as finalized plans.
