Amazon exceeded Wall Street expectations in the first quarter as strong enterprise spending on artificial intelligence pushed Amazon Web Services growth above forecasts, reinforcing investor confidence in the company’s aggressive AI strategy.
AWS revenue rose 28% year-over-year to $37.6 billion, outperforming analyst expectations of roughly 25% growth. Overall Amazon revenue reached $181.5 billion, while shares climbed nearly 4% after hours following the results.
CEO Andy Jassy reaffirmed Amazon’s plan to invest $200 billion in AI infrastructure this year, signaling that the company remains committed to large-scale data center, chip, and cloud expansion despite investor concerns over soaring capital expenditures. Amazon spent $44.2 billion in capex during the quarter alone, up more than 76% from a year earlier.
A major driver of Amazon’s momentum is its expanding AI ecosystem. The company recently deepened partnerships with both OpenAI and Anthropic, making OpenAI’s latest models available through AWS while also committing up to $25 billion to Anthropic. Anthropic, in turn, plans to spend more than $100 billion on AWS over the next decade.
Amazon said AWS AI services are already generating over $15 billion in annualized revenue, underscoring how quickly AI workloads are becoming a major monetization engine.
Beyond cloud, Amazon’s advertising business also surged 24% to $17.2 billion, while retail investments in same-day and grocery delivery continue expanding.
The results position Amazon as one of the strongest performers among Big Tech’s AI leaders, suggesting investors are increasingly willing to tolerate massive infrastructure spending when near-term growth and monetization are visible.
