The e-commerce giant said Amazon Web Services is growing at its fastest rate since 2022, driven by AI. Shares surged in after-hours trading.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is gearing up for massive investments in artificial intelligence (AI), with capital expenditures projected to exceed $100 billion in 2025. This surge focuses on bolstering AI capabilities,

Futures on the US benchmark rose as Amazon jumped 13% in premarket trading, a move set to add about $300 billion to its market value after reporting the fastest cloud-unit growth in nearly three years. Apple Inc. also advanced on a revenue beat and upbeat holiday forecast. Nasdaq 100 contracts advanced 1.1%.

The combination of announcements out of Amazon within the past week may speak to the growing influence of artificial intelligence as a workforce engine.

Amazon posted higher fiscal third quarter profit and sales compared with a year ago, fueled by accelerating growth in its cloud computing business and strong spending by its customers looking for low prices at a time when inflation is resurging.

Nvidia stock was rising after Amazon added to the chorus of large cloud-computing companies saying demand for AI capacity outstrips supply

Amazon.com plans to continue spending on capacity to meet demand for artificial intelligence and cloud products.

Management didn't provide a clear answer when Baird analyst Colin Sebastian asked about the breakdown of AWS growth between core infrastructure and artificial-intelligence workloads. However, manageme