It did, and then some, on Thursday when Amazon.com Inc. AMZN announced its quarterly results, boosting company shares more than 7% in after-hours trading.It did, and then some, on Thursday when Amazon.com Inc. AMZN announced its quarterly results, boosting company shares more than 7% in after-hours trading.Sales for Amazon’s market-leading AWS jumped 12%, to $22.1 billion, offering proof of its “stabilization” after several rough quarters, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill told CNBC late Thursday.
Last week, Microsoft Corp. MSFT said it expected revenue growth from Azure and other cloud services to continue cooling in the current quarter. Meanwhile, Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL GOOG Google Cloud revenue grew 28%, topping Wall Street estimates. Although Thill and other analysts openly wonder how AWS will adapt in the age of AI, the company’s second-quarter sales figures heartened Amazon’s top boss, who knows a thing or two about the cloud-computing industry.
“Our AWS growth stabilized as customers started shifting from cost optimization to new workload deployment, and AWS has continued to add to its meaningful leadership position in the cloud with a slew of generative AI releases that make it much easier and more cost-effective for companies to train and run models,” embattled Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy, who previously ran AWS, said in a statement Thursday, announcing the results.
Underscoring the importance of AWS, it was mentioned 49 times in Amazon’s second-quarter earnings release, mostly cited in customer use cases.