The horse race between Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud computing businesses has gone through various phases over its nearly two-decade history, with the current AI boom pushing the rivalry to a new, and perhaps unsustainable, level of intensity.
Each company is set to spend roughly $200 billion this year building out its data centers—an unprecedented level of investment—in a frenzied bid to keep up with demand for AI services and to avoid getting overtaken by other cloud rivals like Google. The cloud titans have also forged partnerships and deals with the big AI model makers, creating a web of shifting alliances that each hopes could reshape the competitive landscape.
This week, investors will get an important update on the state of this epic cloud rivalry, when Microsoft reports its quarterly earnings on Wednesday and Amazon follows suit on Thursday. While Amazon and Microsoft have been locked in the cloud battle for years, the pressure has never been higher and investor patience has never been more unpredictable. Revenue growth, profit margins, and customer backlogs at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure will be closely scrutinized. But the costs of the race will also be destiny determinants, as investors question the massive sums of capital being deployed and the timeline for seeing a return on the investment.
