Former Xbox Leader J Allard is Now Overseeing Amazon’s “Breakthrough” Consumer Products

J Allard, a former Microsoft executive who joined Amazon’s devices and services team in September, is now overseeing a new team working on “breakthrough” consumer products. This new “ZeroOne” team, according to a report from CNBC citing recent job listings, is currently “focused on both hardware and software projects.”

During his time at Microsoft, Allard was a founding member of Xbox and worked on many other consumer products, including the company’s Zune media players. He’s one of the few high-profile Microsoft veterans who joined Amazon over the past two years alongside Surface inventor Panos Panay, who now leads the company’s Devices and Services group, and Ralf Groene, the former head of Microsoft’s Windows and Devices design team.

One of the ZeroOne-related job listings spotted by CNBC mentions  “conceiving, designing, and bringing to market computer vision techniques for a new smart-home product.” However, it’s not exactly clear what kind of innovation the ZeroOne team could bring to the smart home space.

“Amazon has pulled in staffers from other business units that have experience developing innovative technologies, including its Alexa voice assistant, Luna cloud gaming service and Halo sleep tracker, according to Linkedin profiles of ZeroOne employees. The head of a projection mapping startup called Lightform that Amazon acquired is helping lead the group,” the report reads.

In an interview with Bloomberg from March 2025, right ahead of the launch of Alexa+ in the US, Panos Panay started teasing upcoming AI products from Amazon. “We’re envisioning what’s the next thing for a customer when it comes to AI devices and we have some incredible ones in development,” the exec said at the time.

While many of Amazon’s products such as the Echo smart speakers, Fire TV sticks, and Kindle e-readers resonated with consumers over the past 10 years, Panay also said in his Bloomberg interview that he wanted to shake off their “cheap” reputation. Amazon is also really invested in the AI race right now, and after failing to get a chunk of the smartphone market with its infamous Fire phone, the company has to look for the next big thing. That’s also what a company like OpenAI is doing with its recent acquisition of Jony Ive’s AI hardware startup.