Amazon shares jumped more than 12% after its cloud division posted its fastest growth in over four years, easing investor fears that the company’s ballooning AI spending was running ahead of the payoff.
Amazon Web Services grew 37% in the second quarter, well past the roughly 31% analysts expected, adding something like $300bn to Amazon’s market value before the bell.
It was a sharp turn from the previous quarter, when a one-off Anthropic gain flattered the numbers and free cash flow collapsed.
AWS is the engine once more. The unit brought in $42.2bn in the quarter and reaccelerated to a pace it had not touched since the last cloud boom, reassuring a market that had grown nervous about the cost of AI.
The worry it soothed was specific. Investors have spent the year asking whether the hyperscalers are pouring hundreds of billions into data centres faster than customers will pay for the capacity.
