Amazon reports $18.2B profit boost as AI strategy takes off
AWS drove Amazon’s second-quarter success with a 17.5% revenue increase, fuelled by booming demand for AI cloud services.
Amazon has reported a 35% increase in quarterly profit, driven by rapid growth in its AI-powered services and cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The tech and e-commerce giant posted net income of $18.2 billion for Q2 2025, up from $13.5 billion a year earlier, while net sales rose 13% to $167.7 billion and exceeded analyst expectations.
CEO Andy Jassy attributed the strong performance to the company’s growing reliance on AI. ‘Our conviction that AI will change every customer experience is starting to play out,’ Jassy said, referencing Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa+ upgrades and new generative AI shopping tools.
AWS remained the company’s growth engine, with revenue climbing 17.5% to $30.9 billion and operating profit rising to $10.2 billion. The surge reflects the increasing demand for cloud infrastructure to support AI deployment across industries.
Despite the solid earnings, Amazon’s share price dipped more than 3% in after-hours trading. Analysts pointed to concerns over the company’s heavy capital spending, particularly its aggressive $100 billion AI investment strategy.
Free cash flow over the past year fell to $18.2 billion, down from $53 billion a year earlier. In Q2 alone, Amazon spent $32.2 billion on infrastructure, nearly double the previous year’s figure, much of it aimed at expanding its data centre and logistics capabilities to support AI workloads.
For the current quarter, Amazon projected revenue of $174.0 to $179.5 billion and operating income between $15.5 and $20.5 billion, slightly below investor hopes but still reflecting double-digit year-on-year growth.
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