Amazon’s second quarter financial results have shown revenue from its cloud unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) rise 12 percent year on year, exceeding analysts’ expectations.
AWS revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2023, reached $22.1bn, beating the $21.79bn analysts’ forecast by StreetAccount.
Out of the e-commerce giant’s $7.7bn operating profit recorded in the quarter, 70 percent was generated by AWS. At the same time, AWS’s segment operating income was down five percent YoY to $5.4bn, but still exceeding the StreetAccount estimation of $5.24bn.
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, said: “Our AWS growth stabilized as customers started shifting from cost optimization to new workload deployment, and AWS has continued to add to its meaningful leadership position in the cloud with a slew of generative AI releases that make it much easier and more cost-effective for companies to train and run models (Trainium and Inferentia chips), customize Large Language Models to build generative AI applications and agents (Bedrock) and write code much more efficiently with CodeWhisperer.”
During the quarter, AWS launched its Bedrock service that organizations can use to deploy generative AI models that can compose text and images responding to words or images people submit.
Announcing some key customer highlights from the quarter, AWS said that Omnicom, a global marketing and communications company, will use AWS generative AI and ML services, including Amazon Bedrock and Amazon EC2 Trn1n instances powered by AWS Trainium chips, to help accelerate advertising campaign development, including automating activities such as developing creative briefs, media plans, ad creative, audience segmentation and performance measurement.
Royal Philips will also use Amazon Bedrock to create a generative AI application to provide clinical decision support, help enable more accurate diagnoses and automate administrative tasks. Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria has also chosen AWS analytics and ML to transform its internal processes, improve risk management, drive growth and provide innovative solutions for its customers.
Earlier this month, AWS announced that it has partnered with Sumitomo Corporation, a global trading and investment conglomerate, with the aim of leveraging AWS’s expertise in SAP digital transformation services to upgrade its operations. In June, AWS announced at the Collision Conference that it has launched its AWS Global Fintech Accelerator program created in partnership with NVIDIA, selecting 150 fintech startups that harness the power of AI and ML technology from across North America, EMEA and Latin America.
