Amazon Web Services (AWS) is growing at a pace “we haven’t seen since 2022,” according to CEO Andy Jassy, after the division reported a 20% year-over-year revenue spike. The cloud arm brought in $33bn, sailing past Wall Street’s $32.42bn estimate and driving Amazon’s overall stock up 9% in after-hours trading.
This robust growth comes in spite of a highly-publicized global outage earlier in the month. The incident, which took critical infrastructure offline for hours, ultimately failed to put a dent in the division’s powerful earnings, demonstrating how integral AWS is to the modern internet.
The success of AWS propelled Amazon’s total quarterly performance. The $2.4tn tech giant reported total revenues of $180.17bn and $1.95 earnings per share, soundly beating analyst predictions on both fronts.
The company is now focusing on capitalizing on the AI boom, a race where its stock has lagged behind some rivals. On the earnings call, executives touted new AI tools like the Rufus shopping assistant and progress in its Zoox robotaxi business.
This financial success was juxtaposed with the news of significant job cuts. Amazon is laying off 14,000 corporate employees to “operate like the world’s largest startup.” CEO Jassy, however, denied the cuts were financially or AI-driven, claiming they were a result of a desired “culture” change.