Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Matt Garman delivers a keynote address during the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.
Noah Berger | Getty Images
Amazon said Thursday that revenue in its cloud computing business increased 20% in the third quarter, exceeding analysts’ estimates.
Revenue at Amazon Web Services for the third quarter totaled $33 billion. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had expected $32.42 billion, or growth of 18.1% from a year earlier. Operating income rose 9% from a year ago to $11.4 billion, also beating estimates and accounting for about two-thirds of Amazon’s total operating profit.
AWS is the world’s top provider of cloud infrastructure, but it’s facing intensifying pressure from competitors Google and Microsoft, which also reported quarterly results this week.
Google’s cloud revenue increased 34% during the third quarter, while Microsoft Azure recorded growth of 40%.
Amazon’s earnings report comes a little over a week after AWS experienced an extended outage that lasted more than 15 hours, taking down numerous websites. Microsoft was hit with outages in its Azure cloud and 365 services on Wednesday, hours before its scheduled earnings release.
Amazon officially opened its $11 billion AI data center called Project Rainier on Wednesday. The facility, first announced last year, is intended to train and run models from Claude creator Anthropic. Amazon, which has invested $8 billion in Anthropic, said the startup will use 1 million of its custom Trainium2 chips by the end of 2025.
The new data center could help Amazon battle the perception that it’s missing out on a flurry of highly lucrative artificial intelligence deals for cloud services. Anthropic and Google deepened their cloud partnership last week in a deal worth tens of billions of dollars, while Meta has inked hefty cloud deals with Google and Oracle in recent months.
WATCH: Amazon’s $11 billion data center in Indiana goes live
