{"id":615028,"date":"2026-04-30T09:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/615028\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T09:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:54:15","slug":"amazon-tops-cloud-expectations-on-strong-ai-demand-shares-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/615028\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon tops cloud expectations on strong AI demand, shares rise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Deborah Mary Sophia and Greg Bensinger<\/p>\n

April 29 (Reuters) – Amazon.com on Wednesday reported cloud sales growth above Wall Street expectations, driven by strong enterprise spending as companies continue to devote tremendous resources to their artificial intelligence<\/a> efforts.<\/p>\n

CEO Andy Jassy said the company was maintaining its target for $200 \u200cbillion in AI investment this year, a relief to investors who have seen Big Tech relentlessly hike capital spending forecasts into the hundreds of billions \u200cin the rush to build out data-center capacity needed for AI workloads. Shares rose nearly 4% in volatile after-hours action.<\/p>\n

Revenue at Amazon Web Services (AWS) jumped 28% to $37.6 billion in the first quarter, beating analysts’ \u200baverage estimate for a 25% increase, according to LSEG. Net sales overall grew to $181.5 billion.<\/p>\n

The Seattle company, the world’s largest cloud services provider, has lately boosted investor confidence by deepening its partnership with the two biggest AI firms, OpenAI<\/a> and Anthropic, within days of each other. The stock is up some 14% so far this year, among the best performers in the “Magnificent 7” group of tech mega-caps, as the firm works overtime to reassure investors that its AI spending will generate returns in the near term.<\/p>\n

Jassy struck an upbeat tone \u200coverall, praising cloud computing and chip deals as well as \u2060plans to expand the company’s nascent satellite internet network. Those developments mean “that we’re really unusually well positioned for the inflection that we’re seeing and the type of growth that we’re experiencing,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The significant reacceleration in AWS sales growth is the standout story,” said \u2060Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com, adding that Amazon customers “are fully embracing new workloads, especially in AI.”<\/p>\n

Rival Alphabet’s shares were up 7% in post-market action, after it said its Google Cloud division’s sales grew 63% to $20 billion in the first quarter, exceeding estimates for a 50% rise. Gil Luria, a D.A. Davidson analyst, noted that for AWS, “the much better growth rate at \u200bGoogle \u200bCloud may be a slight disappointment.”<\/p>\n

The roughly $600 billion that Big Tech is expected to pour into \u200bAI this year – a historic outlay that has dented their cash \u200cflows – is testing investors’ patience, even as companies say that it is necessary to increase computing capacity as strong AI demand outstrips supply.<\/p>\n

For the period ended March 31, Amazon’s capital expenditures were $44.2 billion, up more than 76% from the year-earlier period, and above analysts’ estimate of $41.40 billion. In February, Amazon projected about $200 billion in such spending for the year, an initial shock to investors.<\/p>\n

Jassy said in his shareholder letter this month that much of the company’s 2026 spending will be monetized over 2027 and 2028.<\/p>\n

Amazon projected current-quarter operating income between $20 billion and $24 billion, a slightly wider downside range from the current midpoint estimate of $22.62 billion.<\/p>\n

BIG CLOUD PARTNERSHIPS<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Amazon made available all of OpenAI’s \u200clatest models and its coding agent, Codex, on AWS, taking advantage of loosened ties between the \u200bChatGPT maker and cloud rival Microsoft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last week, Amazon struck a deal to invest up to $25 billion in \u200bAnthropic, while the Claude creator committed to spending more than $100 billion on \u200bAWS in the next 10 years. The company earlier this month said AI services at AWS were generating more than $15 billion in \u200cannualized revenue.<\/p>\n

Amazon forecast current-quarter revenue between $194 billion and $199 billion, compared with the \u200banalysts’ average estimate of $188.9 billion, according to \u200bLSEG. That factors in a slight negative effect from unfavorable foreign exchange rates.<\/p>\n

At its retail business, Amazon has been investing in expanding same-day delivery to more towns and small cities, and has sharpened its focus on grocery delivery to better compete with supermarket chains such as Walmart and Kroger.<\/p>\n

Ad sales, an \u200barea of huge growth for Amazon, jumped 24% year-over-year to $17.2 \u200cbillion. The company has been putting ads just about anywhere it can, including in grocery shopping carts and Prime Video content.<\/p>\n

Amazon has been trimming \u200bcorporate jobs, including 16,000 in January, across a broad swath of roles. However, its total workforce was down only 1,000 from the end of \u200blast year.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and David Gaffen)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Deborah Mary Sophia and Greg Bensinger April 29 (Reuters) – Amazon.com on Wednesday reported cloud sales growth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,6061,181,507,52682,266592,74],"class_list":["post-615028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-amazon-web-services","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-cloud-services","tag-sales-growth","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}