AWS exceeds Wall Street's expectations as demand for cloud infra remains high

Core Insights - Amazon Web Services (AWS) is experiencing its strongest growth in three years, driven by unprecedented demand from the AI industry for computing power [1] - AWS reported a 20% year-over-year growth, achieving $33.1 billion in sales for the first nine months of the year, with operating income rising to $11.4 billion in Q3, up from $10.4 billion in the same quarter of 2024 [2] - AWS's CEO, Andy Jassy, highlighted the re-acceleration of growth to 20.2% year-over-year, emphasizing strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and noted the addition of over 3.8 gigawatts of capacity in the past year [3] Business Developments - AWS secured several new deals in Q3 across various industries, including partnerships with AI companies like Perplexity and Cursor [4] - Competitors in the cloud infrastructure space, such as OpenAI and Oracle, have also engaged in significant deals, including a $300 billion cloud compute agreement set to begin in 2027, and a $30 billion annual payment from OpenAI to Oracle for data center services [5] - Despite skepticism regarding future cloud infrastructure needs, AWS is capitalizing on a market where customers are willing to invest heavily in services [6] Strategic Investments - AWS plans to aggressively invest in capacity to meet the growing demand for AI infrastructure, with Jassy stating that the company is monetizing the capacity being added [8] - This announcement follows Amazon's decision to cut 14,000 corporate jobs to reallocate resources towards its AI strategy [8]