Amazon cloud records 20% sales growth, topping estimates

Core Insights - Amazon's cloud computing revenue increased by 20% in Q3, reaching $33 billion, surpassing analysts' expectations of $32.42 billion, which represented a growth of 18.1% [1] - AWS faces increasing competition from Google and Microsoft, with Google reporting a 34% revenue increase and Microsoft Azure achieving 40% growth in the same quarter [2] - AWS recently experienced a significant outage lasting over 15 hours, impacting numerous websites, while Microsoft also faced outages shortly before its earnings release [3] Investment and Strategic Developments - Amazon launched its $11 billion AI data center, Project Rainier, aimed at training models for Anthropic, a startup in which Amazon has invested $8 billion [4] - The new data center is expected to enhance Amazon's position in the competitive AI cloud services market, especially as Anthropic plans to utilize 1 million of Amazon's custom Trainium2 chips by the end of 2025 [4] - Amazon's efforts to strengthen its AI capabilities come in response to significant cloud partnerships formed by competitors, including a multi-billion dollar deal between Anthropic and Google, as well as substantial agreements between Meta and other cloud providers [5]