Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division that has long been Amazon's most profitable business, reported roughly 39.3 percent revenue growth year over year in the third quarter, bringing in close to 46 billion dollars in sales. That is the fastest growth rate the unit has posted in nearly five years, a sign of how much demand artificial intelligence workloads are now driving across the cloud computing industry.
Amazon's guidance suggested the acceleration is not a one time event. The company told investors it expects AWS growth to climb above 40 percent in both 2027 and 2028, an unusually confident multi year forecast for a business of AWS's size. Cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft's Azure, and Google Cloud rent out computing power, storage, and increasingly specialized AI chips to businesses and developers who do not want to build and maintain their own data centers. As companies race to train and run AI models, demand for that capacity has surged, and AWS has historically been the largest provider in the market.
The results land amid a broader industry conversation about whether the enormous capital spending by cloud providers on data centers, chips, and power supply is being matched by actual revenue. Other major cloud operators have faced tougher questions from investors this earnings season about the gap between the money going into AI infrastructure and the money coming back out in signed business. AWS's acceleration gives Amazon a stronger answer to that question than some of its rivals have managed, at least for now, with the growth rate marking the fastest pace recorded by the unit in nearly five years.
The cloud computing business sits at the center of the broader AI buildout that has dominated markets this year. Hyperscalers, the term used for the handful of companies large enough to build planet scale computing infrastructure, are locking in long term agreements with chipmakers and memory suppliers to secure capacity years in advance, even as the lag between spending money and recognizing revenue from it continues to widen.
Investors will be watching whether Amazon's cloud growth holds up as more AI workloads move from testing into full production, and whether rival cloud providers can match the pace AWS has now set.
Why did AWS grow so fast this quarter?
Rising demand for AI computing workloads has pushed more businesses to rent cloud capacity, accelerating AWS's growth to its fastest pace in nearly five years.
What is AWS?
AWS, or Amazon Web Services, is Amazon's cloud computing division, which rents out computing power, storage, and software tools to businesses.