AWS Q1 growth pushes ahead as cloud revenue soars

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Amazon has just announced impressive year-on-year growth on the back of another three successful months during which it saw net sales reach $143.3 billion, representing a healthy 13% increase.

Of that, around 17% was made up of AWS segment sales, which saw a 17% growth compared with the 13% growth recorded last quarter, surpassing Wall Street predictions and underpinning it as an important segment of the company’s earnings.

Despite its origins as an online retailer, Amazon’s cloud businesses has added around $5 billion (or another quarter) to its revenue since the second half of 2022, just weeks before OpenAI’s ChatGPT set a new standard for artificial intelligence.

AWS pushed Amazon’s revenue up again

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy commented on AWS’s lucrative role in the company’s books: “The combination of companies renewing their infrastructure modernization efforts and the appeal of AWS’s AI capabilities is reaccelerating AWS’s growth rate.” AWS now has a $100 billion annual revenue run rate.

During the past quarter, AWS made three Local Zones generally available in Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston. It also announced plans for infrastructure Regions in Saudi Arabia and in Mexico and billions in upcoming investment globally to expand its infrastructure and support training efforts.

The company also announced the removal of exit fees for those wanting to migrate their data to another cloud, as well as expansions to its Bedrock generative AI service.

Jassy also thanked expansion to its Stores business and strong Advertising revenue fueled by growth in its Stores and Prime Video businesses for pushing the company’s revenue in an upward trajectory.

Looking ahead, Jassy alluded to continued growth: “It’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward.”