Amazon quietly ends its four-year “Encore” initiative to build an at-home fertility monitor, laying off about 100 staff amid technical hurdles and a company-wide cost-cutting push.
Amazon has shut down a 4-year-old secret program to develop a fertility monitoring device and companion smartphone app, according to recent reports. The effort – codenamed Encore (also referred to as Project Tiberius internally) – was born out of Amazon’s 2020 acquisition of BluDiagnostics, a Wisconsin startup. BluDiagnostics had developed a saliva-based home fertility test (the “FertilityFinder”) to measure women’s estradiol and progesterone hormone levels.
Amazon’s team set out to create a similar “thermometer-like” device and app that would predict a user’s fertility by analysing saliva and tracking menstrual symptoms and activity. (As one report noted, “the goal was a product that could predict a user’s fertility by collecting saliva,” with users then logging period symptoms and other fertility data via a mobile app.)
Encore was housed in Amazon’s Grand Challenge (“Special Projects”) lab – the secretive moonshot incubator launched under Jeff Bezos to pursue high-risk bets. The project team reportedly grew to about 100 engineers and scientists. Several of the BluDiagnostics founders (including Katie Brenner, Doug Weibel and Jodi Schroll) joined Grand Challenge to lead Encore. By late 2022, media reports indicated that the fertility device was still active and “closer to launch,” among the few health initiatives Amazon was continuing to advance.
However, the program never reached market. Internal sources say Amazon informed the team in late October 2024 that Encore would be terminated. On October 28, employees were told in a videoconference that the project was being “killed,” and a layoff notice was signed by Doug Weibel (who took over Grand Challenge after its founding head Babak Parviz left in 2022). Reports indicate roughly 100 project members were affected.
CNBC later confirmed in mid-November that the team would be disbanded and those employees would remain on payroll until late December (with severance for any who did not move to other roles). Amazon had originally planned to ship the device in 2024, but “technical issues resulted in delays”. In fact, sources say the project’s development proved extremely challenging and costly: one person involved estimated Amazon was spending on the order of $1.5 million per week on R&D and salaries.
Those cost overruns came at a bad time for Amazon’s experimental ventures. CEO Andy Jassy has been waging a company-wide cost-cutting campaign since late 2022, slashing more than 27,000 jobs and canceling numerous “bet-the-company” projects. In that context, Encore became an easy target. An Amazon spokesman told CNBC that the company “regularly review[s] our businesses to ensure we focus on areas where we can make the biggest difference for customers,” and that after “a recent review, we’ve decided to discontinue this project within Grand Challenge.” The spokesman added that Amazon is “working directly with employees whose roles are impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities”.
Reaction and expert commentary: Insiders say the decision blindsided many team members. Workers on the Grand Challenge team were reportedly “huge surprise[d] and a major disappointment,” according to people familiar with the matter. Industry observers pointed out that Amazon is not the first tech giant to stumble in women’s health devices. Katie McMillan, a digital health consultant, noted that Amazon burned roughly $300 million on the project before pulling the plug, calling it a case of “Big Tech’s missteps in women’s health innovation”.
Others remarked that at-home fertility tracking is already served by inexpensive, highly accurate ovulation tests and a crowded field of apps and monitors, so a bespoke saliva sensor may have offered little competitive advantage.
Implications for Amazon’s health strategy: The end of Encore fits with a clear shift in Amazon’s approach. Under founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Grand Challenge lab embraced bold experiments in healthcare (from drug discovery to baby cameras), but Jassy has been increasingly focused on core, revenue-driving services. In recent years Amazon has expanded into health care through acquisitions and services: it launched Amazon Pharmacy via the PillPack acquisition in 2018, and in February 2023 it agreed to buy primary-care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion.
Last year Amazon Clinic (its direct-to-consumer telehealth platform) was folded into the One Medical brand, and the company is piloting in-office pharmacy kiosks at One Medical clinics. At the same time, Amazon has shut down other experiments (such as the Amazon Care employer health benefit and the Alexa-enabled “Glow” video phone) in favor of streamlining operations. Analysts say Encore’s cancellation signals that Amazon will now prioritize initiatives with clearer paths to scale – like telehealth and pharmacy – over speculative new devices.
Amazon declined further comment. A spokeswoman reiterated that the Encore project will be discontinued and that affected employees will be helped with reassignments or transitions as much as possible. In the meantime, Amazon’s surviving health initiatives – from Clinic and Pharmacy to the newly expanded One Medical services – are likely to get the bulk of the company’s attention in the near future.