AWS Growth Hits 20% as Amazon Races to Catch AI Rivals

Amazon’s core cloud business is booming, providing a powerful foundation for the company’s race to catch rivals in artificial intelligence. Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported a 20% year-over-year revenue increase, hitting $33bn and beating estimates.
This growth, the fastest since 2022, is a welcome sign for investors. Amazon’s stock, which jumped 9% on the news, has lagged behind competitors like Microsoft, whose OpenAI partnership has dominated the AI narrative.
On the earnings call, Amazon executives were eager to showcase their own AI progress. They pointed to the Rufus shopping assistant and the expansion of Zoox robotaxi testing as key developments.
The strong AWS performance is also the first financial report since a major global outage. The incident, which took down critical hospital and banking systems, demonstrated the world’s reliance on AWS but did not slow its growth.
Alongside the positive earnings, Amazon confirmed 14,000 corporate layoffs. CEO Andy Jassy attributed the cuts not to AI, but to a “culture” decision aimed at making the tech giant more “nimble.”