Amazon's cloud sales rise 39% as AI spending pushes cash flow negative
Amazon Web Services brought in $46 billion in the quarter, and Amazon expects faster growth in 2027 and 2028.
Amazon said Oct. 29 that sales at Amazon Web Services, its business that rents computing power and AI tools to other companies, rose 39% in the third quarter from a year earlier, to $46.0 billion.
Total sales rose 12% to $201.9 billion. Operating income, the profit from Amazon's main businesses, climbed to $28.1 billion from $17.4 billion. Net income slipped to $20.7 billion, mainly because last year's results included $9.5 billion in gains on Amazon's investments in Anthropic, the San Francisco AI company.
Amazon's spending on property and equipment rose by $94.8 billion over the past year, mostly for artificial intelligence, the company said. That left its free cash flow, the cash left after such spending, at an outflow of $42.4 billion for the 12 months.
Chief Executive Andy Jassy said Amazon projects cloud revenue growth of more than 40% in both 2027 and 2028. Amazon said use of Bedrock, its service for running AI models, grew nearly 17 times from a year earlier.