AWS beats Wall Street expectations as demand for cloud infrastructure remains high

Amazon’s cloud infrastructure service, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is on track to record its strongest year of growth in three years, fueled by the AI ​​industry’s unprecedented demand for computing power.

AWS is growing 20% ​​year over year and ended the third quarter with sales of $33.1 billion through the first nine months of the year, Amazon announced in its third-quarter earnings statement Thursday. The business’s operating income rose to $11.4 billion in the third quarter, up from $10.4 billion in the same period in 2024.

“AWS is growing at a pace not seen since 2022, accelerating again to 20.2% year over year,” Andy Jassy, ​​Amazon’s president and CEO, said in the company’s earnings call. “We continue to see strong demand for AI and core infrastructure, and we have been focused on accelerating capacity – adding more than 3.8 GW in the past 12 months.”

AWS launched an infrastructure region in New Zealand this quarter and has three more in the pipeline.

The cloud infrastructure provider also secured several new deals in the third quarter across a variety of industries, including some notable names in the AI ​​market. In July, AWS partnered with Perplexity to launch the AI ​​browser company’s enterprise product. AWS also partnered with Cursor during the third quarter.

Its extensive AI infrastructure requirements have also been a boon to AWS’s competitors. OpenAI and Oracle allegedly signed a massive $300 billion cloud computing deal in September that will start in 2027. The pair also struck a deal with OpenAI to pay Oracle $30 billion annually for data center services. Last week, Google and Anthropic announced a cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars.

These mega deals come despite doubts about how much cloud infrastructure will actually be needed in the future and whether the industry is heading into bubble territory. However, it makes sense for cloud companies like AWS to tap into a market where customers are willing to pay significant sums for their services.

“You’ll see us continuing to be aggressive in investing in capabilities because we see the demand,” Jassy said of investing in AI infrastructure. “As quickly as we’re adding capacity now, we’re monetizing it.”

This news comes two days after Amazon announced it would cut 14,000 jobs at the company, as it looks to invest more in its artificial intelligence strategy.