Amazon AWS Q2 Revenue Up 37% as Capital Spend Forecast Rises

Amazon reported its strongest cloud revenue growth in over four years for the second quarter and significantly raised its annual capital spending forecast, signaling that intense demand for artificial intelligence services is justifying massive infrastructure investments. The company's shares surged nearly 9 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday, July 30, following the announcement.

Revenue at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company's cloud computing division, jumped 37 percent year-over-year to $42.2 billion for the quarter ended June 30, handily exceeding analyst expectations. CEO Andy Jassy said this marked the unit's fastest growth in 18 quarters, declaring that AWS is "booming." He also noted that the company's AI and custom chip businesses have each surpassed annual revenue run rates of $25 billion.

Concurrently, Amazon increased its full-year capital expenditure forecast by 10 percent to $220 billion, up from a previous plan of $200 billion announced in February. Jassy cited higher memory chip costs as a primary driver for the increase. He emphasized that even at this elevated spending level, Amazon will not have enough computing capacity to meet all customer demand...