Amazon’s stock popped more than 13% on Thursday afternoon after the company reported huge growth in the third quarter, including in its cloud business, Amazon Web Services.
CEO Andy Jassy said AWS was “growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022.” He also called out particularly strong demand for its AI offerings.
“We continue to see strong demand in AI and core infrastructure,” Jassy said.
The company’s results exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, offering investors a sigh of relief, particularly as Amazon’s stock has been the laggard of the Magnificent Seven this year.
“This banner quarter could mark a turning point for investor sentiment and set the stage for Amazon to reclaim a leadership role among large-cap tech stocks heading into year-end,” Ethan Feller, stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research, said on Thursday afternoon.
The earnings report came after Amazon earlier this week said it would be cutting 14,000 jobs in one of the biggest rounds of layoffs in its history.
Jassy told analysts on Thursday’s earnings call that the layoffs were “not financially driven” and were instead about making the company faster after years of head count growth.
