Amazon shares surged over 11% in early trading on Friday following a strong financial report from its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and a positive sales outlook.
This performance eased concerns that the tech giant was lagging in the artificial intelligence (AI) race against rivals. AWS, the focus of Amazon's recent AI investments, saw its revenue climb 20% in the third quarter.
While Microsoft Azure (40% growth) and Google Cloud (34% growth) showed higher percentage increases, AWS's massive scale generating $33 billion in cloud revenue (more than double Google Cloud's $15.16 billion) magnifies the impact of its growth.
Analysts called the earnings a potential turning point for Amazon, noting that AWS is now "aboard the train" and seeing the expected AI-fueled revenue boost sooner than anticipated.
