How is Andy Jassy Driving Amazon’s AI and Cloud Expansion?

Amazon has posted its third quarter results, highlighting broad-based growth with its cloud division outperforming expectations.

Andy Jassy, President and CEO of Amazon, steered the company to a 13% rise in net sales to US$180.2bn, up from US$158.9bn during the same period in 2024.

The company also reported earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.95 on revenue of US$180.2bn, with North American sales growing 11% year-over-year and international sales climbing 14%.

Discussing Amazon’s successes, Andy says: “We continue to see strong momentum and growth across Amazon as AI drives meaningful improvements in every corner of our business.

“AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022, re-accelerating to 20.2% year-on-year.

“We continue to see strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and we’ve been focused on accelerating capacity, adding more than 3.8 gigawatts in the past 12 months.”

The results follow closely on the heels of earnings from rivals Microsoft and Google, both of which announced plans to ramp up investment in artificial intelligence and data centre infrastructure.

Growing AI successes in 2025

In December 2024, Amazon introduced Trainium2, a chip designed for training AI models.

The company reported that demand for the chip is fully subscribed as of the third quarter, describing it as a multi-billion-dollar business that grew 150% quarter over quarter.

On 29 October, Amazon launched Project Rainier, a large-scale AI compute cluster featuring nearly 500,000 Trainium2 chips to support the development and deployment of Anthropic’s Claude AI models.

During the launch, Amazon confirmed that Anthropic has agreed to use one million of the custom chips by the end of 2025.

In another key partnership, Amazon unveiled EC2 P6e-GB200 UltraServers powered by Nvidia Grace Blackwell Superchips in July, adding to its AI-driven growth.

According to the company, these UltraServers are built to “designed for training and deploying the largest, most sophisticated AI models”.

Amazon also reported that its AI solution Grew Connect, which helps contact centres deliver consistent and personalised customer interactions, has expanded to a US$1bn annualised revenue run rate in recent weeks.

Additional AI innovations highlighted in the company’s third quarter results include the feature ‘Help Me Decide,’ the AI agent Transform and Alexa+, which customers are now using four times more than the original version.

The price of AI

On 29 October, Amazon announced plans to cut approximately 14,000 corporate roles, a move driven by the company’s strategic shift toward expanding its investments and capabilities in artificial intelligence.

According to the BBC, Amazon’s Senior Vice President Beth Galetti said in a note to employees: “We’re convicted that we need to be organised more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move quickly as possible for our customers and business.”

While the cuts will impact about 4% of Amazon’s corporate workforce, leadership has characterised the decision as a step toward reinvention rather than retrenchment.

In a message to employees, Beth says the changes would make Amazon “even stronger” by allowing it to “shift resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs”.

Andy says, according to the BBC: “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”

Analysts suggest the cuts reflect a wider transformation across the tech industry.

Ben Barringer, technology analyst at Quilter Cheviot, told the BBC that as AI tools continue to advance, “job losses are inevitable”.

Future success at Amazon 

For the fourth quarter of 2025, Amazon projects net sales between US$206bn and US$213bn, with operating income expected to range from US$21bn to US$26bn, compared with US$21.2bn in the same period last year.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, Amazon expects net sales of between US$26bn and US$213bn, its operating income is expected to be between US$21bn and US$26bn, compared with US$21.2bn in Q4 2024.

Discussing other areas of Amazon products, Andy says: “In stores, we continue to realise the benefits of innovating in our fulfilment network and we’re on track to deliver to Prime members at the fastest speeds ever again this year, and expand same-day delivery of perishable groceries to over 2,300 communities with access to Amazon’s Same-Day and Next-Day Delivery.”