Amazon Web Services (AWS) is on a growth surge, as CEO Andy Jassy shared during a recent earnings call. They posted a solid 19.1% increase in revenue year-over-year for the third quarter of 2023, bringing in $27.5 billion, compared to $23 billion last year. Their profit also climbed from $7 billion to $10.4 billion over the same period.
Jassy noted that AWS has experienced a “significant re-acceleration” in growth, highlighting this shift after a challenging period. About 18 months back, many companies hit the brakes on cloud spending due to economic pressures, largely focusing on optimizing existing resources rather than expanding their off-premise capabilities.
However, the landscape has changed. Companies are now eager to invest in cloud infrastructure to harness generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Jassy pointed out, “It’s much harder to be successful and competitive in generative AI if your data isn’t in the cloud.” As organizations modernize their infrastructure, they aim to save costs, boost innovation, and maximize the efficiency of their engineering teams. This shift also allows them to structure their data appropriately for large-scale AI applications.
AWS offers a three-layered GenAI stack. The first layer supports firms wanting to build their own large language models (LLMs) from the ground up. The second caters to those looking to leverage existing LLMs, utilizing services like Amazon Bedrock. The third layer assists companies that prefer a more hands-off strategy through Amazon Q, a tool designed for building GenAI applications.
Jassy emphasized the rapid growth of AWS’s GenAI offerings, which have become a key competitive advantage. Over the past 18 months, AWS has rolled out nearly double the number of machine learning and GenAI features compared to other leading cloud providers combined. He declared that AWS’s AI business now has a multibillion-dollar revenue run rate and is expanding at a triple-digit rate year-over-year, significantly outpacing the early growth of AWS itself.
