AWS sees another record year for Amazon as AI push drives cloud growth
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Amazon has unveiled its latest quarterly results, revealing in the three months leading up to December 31, 2023, it drew in $170 billion in revenue, marking a 14% increase over the previous quarter.
Of that, $24.2 billion was driven by its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, representing a 13% increase compared with the same period 12 months before. Over the course of 2023, AWS pulled in $90.8 billion, up from $80.1 billion in 2022.
The division’s growth matched what analysts had expected, and is largely attributable to the increasing interest in artificial intelligence.
AWS sales pushed Amazon revenue up
Revenue driven by AWS was slightly under that of Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud services (which includes Azure), however Microsoft’s cloud revenue growth of 30% far outpaces that of Amazon’s. Even Google Cloud, with a much smaller revenue cash value, saw a considerably larger growth of 26%.
In a statement, CEO Andy Jassy shared some of the company’s highlights, including a big mention of its ecommerce business. Jassy also recognized AWS’s new generative AI features, such as Bedrock, Q, and its Trainium chips.
In recent months, the company has made considerable developments within AWS, including announcing a new AWS European Sovereign Cloud to better cater to European regulations and expanding the company’s infrastructure with the launch of its AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region.
AWS now has 105 Availability Zones within 33 geographic Regions globally, and has confirmed its plans to develop 12 more Availability Zones and four additional Regions. Google Cloud, though, has 121 Zones over 40 Regions, putting it ahead of Amazon despite its smaller revenue.
Looking ahead, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said: “We expect the acceleration to continue in 2024.”
Jassy added: “Gen AI is and will continue to be an area of pervasive focus and investment across Amazon, primarily because there are few initiatives if any that give us the chance to reinvent so many of our customers experiences and processes, and we believe it will ultimately drive tens of billions of dollars of revenue for Amazon over the next several years.”
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