Amazon Sees Agentic AI Customers Shaping Future Growth

Core Insights - Amazon is shifting its focus to designing products for "non-human" customers, such as software agents that can autonomously make purchasing decisions [3][4] - CEO Andy Jassy emphasized the company's ambition to lead in agentic AI development and infrastructure, addressing the growing demand for tools to deploy AI agents securely and at scale [4][5] Financial Performance - In the second quarter, Amazon reported net sales of $167.7 billion, a 13% increase year-over-year, and operating income rose 31% to $19.2 billion [12] - North America retail sales grew by 11%, while advertising revenue increased by 22% to $15.7 billion [12] - AWS achieved a 17.5% growth rate, reaching a $123 billion annualized run-rate, although its margin decreased to 32.9% due to rising stock-based compensation and depreciation [12] Future Outlook - Amazon's management expects third-quarter revenue to be between $174 billion and $179.5 billion, indicating high-single-digit to low-double-digit growth, with projected operating income of $15.5 billion to $20.5 billion [13] - The company is investing heavily in data centers and custom AI chips, which has led to a decrease in free cash flow to $18.2 billion over the past 12 months [13] - Jassy highlighted the early stage of the AI market, suggesting significant future opportunities as Amazon aims to monetize its non-human customer base [14]