AWS growth accelerates 28% in Q1

Amazon said Amazon Web Services revenue growth accelerated to 29% in the first quarter and delivered operating income of $14.2 billion on revenue of $37.6 billion.

AWS drove profitability for what was a better-than-expected quarter from Amazon. The company reported first quarter net income of $30.3 billion, or $2.78 a share, on revenue of $181.5 billion, up 17% from a year ago. Amazon said its first quarter net income got a $16.8 billion boost from its Anthropic stake.

Wall Street expected Amazon to report first quarter earnings of $1.64 a share on revenue of $177.17 billion.

CEO Andy Jassy said AWS is putting up revenue growth at the fastest clip in 15 quarters. "AWS is growing 28% (our fastest growth in 15 quarters) on a very large base, our chips business topped a $20 billion revenue run rate (growing triple digits year-over-year)," said Jassy.

By the numbers:

• North American revenue was up 12% in the first quarter to $104.1 billion with operating income of $8.3 billion.
• International commerce operating income was $1.4 billion in the first quarter on revenue of $39.8 billion, up 19% from a year ago.
• AWS revenue rate is now north of $150 billion.
• AWS chips business, which includes Graviton, Trainium and Nitro, grew at triple-digit percentages.
• More than half of the company's 2.1 million AI chips deployed over the past 12 months were Trainium.

As for the outlook, Amazon projected second quarter sales between $194 billion to $199 billion, up 16% to 19% from a year ago. Operating income will be between $20 billion and $24 billion. The outlook assumes Prime Day drops in the second quarter.

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