Amazon Web Services’ clients are leaning into the cloud for innovation and adding more workload tasks to the cloud.
Since the third quarter of 2023, AWS has added “more than $1.1 billion of revenue,” Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said during AWS’ fourth-quarter earnings call on Feb. 1, noting that companies looking for cost optimization “continue to attenuate larger new deals.”
For example, AWS inked new deals with Salesforce, BMW, NVIDIA, LG, Hyundai and MUFG among others, Chief Executive Andrew Jassy said on the call.
BIGGER PICTURE: Financial institutions continue to become cloud-native, with many selecting AWS to accomplish their cloud migration goals. The following banks are using AWS for cloud services:
- The $61 billion, Morristown, N.J.-based Valley Bank has contracted with AWS and Snowflake to move all of its operations to the cloud by 2026;
- Bank of Montreal, based in Montreal, Quebec, has a multi-cloud strategy with AWS and Microsoft Azure; and
- The $280 billion, Boston-based State Street is using AWS and Azure for cloud and infrastructure solutions.
“We continue to see the diminishing impact of cost optimizations and as these optimizations slow down, we’re seeing more companies turning their attention to newer initiatives and reaccelerating existing migrations,” Olsavsky said.
BY THE NUMBERS: AWS reported in Q4:
- Operating income increased by $2 billion year over year to $7.2 billion; and
- Revenue was $24.2 billion, up 13% YoY.
NOTEWORTHY: During Q4, AWS added new models to its platform, including Meta’s foundation model Llama 2, Jassy said.
“We also added new models from Anthropic, Cohere, Meta with Llama2, Stability AI and our own Amazon Titan family of [foundation models],” Jassy said. “What customers have learned at this early stage of gen AI is there’s meaningful iteration required in building a production gen AI application with the requisite enterprise quality at the cost and latency needed.”
Meta is also partnering with Amazon to create Buy with Prime, a seamless shopping experience through Facebook and Instagram, Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said during that company’s Q4 earnings call on Feb. 1.
“This is really early, and we’re testing this experience with them,” she said. “But it’s another avenue for us to explore, how can we make these shopping experiences easier for folks on our platform.”
Additionally, this quarter, Meta teamed up with Visa for P2P payments.
FORWARD LOOK: AWS saw an uptick in cloud revenue and overall investment in AI and generative AI, as did Google and Microsoft.
“We have seen significant interest from our customers wanting to run generative AI applications and build large language models and foundation models,” AWS’ Olsavsky said.
One client, London-based NatWest, has tapped AWS’ gen AI-driven tool, SageMaker, to provide customers with personalized experiences for savings, purchases, education and money management, according to a September 2023 release.
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