Amazon AWS Just Grew 37%. Fastest Cloud Print in 18 Quarters.
By The Numbers
- $200.6B - Q2 net sales, up 20% year over year
- $27.5B - Operating income, up 43%
- +37% - AWS sales to $42.2B, fastest in 18 quarters
- $169B - AWS annualized revenue run rate
- >$25B - AI and chips run rates each, triple-digit growth
Amazon did not whisper through second quarter. It rewrote the cloud growth chart in public.
Net sales hit $200.6 billion, up 20% year over year. Operating income printed $27.5 billion, up 43%. AWS sales jumped 37% to $42.2 billion. That is the fastest AWS growth in 18 quarters, and management put the annualized run rate near $169 billion.
Hold on. Let me stop here. The headline was not just "beat." It was velocity. AI and chips businesses each crossed more than a $25 billion annual revenue run rate, growing triple digits. Anthropic and OpenAI both sit on multi-year, multi-gigawatt Trainium commitments. That is infrastructure demand talking, not a slide deck.
What the Tape Paid For
Shares ripped more than 10% after the print and helped drag the Nasdaq out of a six-day losing streak on Thursday. North America retail still grew 16%. Advertising climbed 26%. Same-day and overnight Prime delivery volumes kept rising. The boring parts of the machine did not break while AWS reaccelerated.
Net income jumped to $62.6 billion, or $5.75 per diluted share. That number includes a massive non-operating mark, primarily from the Anthropic stake. You do not get to treat that as core AWS cash. You also do not get to ignore that the market still bid the operating story.
The Capex Tell
Trailing twelve-month free cash flow flipped to an outflow of about $7.6 billion. Purchases of property and equipment jumped hard year over year. AI buildout is expensive on purpose. Microsoft already forced that conversation earlier in the week. Amazon just answered with growth that still cleared the skepticism bar for one session.
You do not have to trust the celebration. Trust the segment math. AWS operating income hit $16.6 billion in the quarter, up from $10.2 billion a year earlier. When the highest-margin engine accelerates and retail holds, the multiple argument changes even if the bill for GPUs and data centers stays ugly.
What to Watch Next
Capex commentary into the second half. Trainium adoption outside the two biggest AI labs. Whether advertising stays in the mid-20s while retail comps normalize. And whether the market keeps paying for AI revenue that shows up in AWS instead of only in footnoted "investments."
Bottom line: Amazon just made the AI spend debate about run-rate again. The open loop is simple. Can that 37% cloud print hold when the depreciation bill keeps climbing?
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