Amazon Web Services (AWS) concluded the year 2025 with its most impressive quarterly growth rate in over three years. The cloud service division reported a remarkable $35.6 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, reflecting a 24% increase compared to the previous year, marking the largest growth rate in 13 quarters. The annual revenue run rate for this segment stands at $142 billion.
During the fourth quarter earnings call, Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy highlighted the significance of this growth, stating, "Achieving 24% growth on a $142 billion run rate is vastly different from achieving a higher percentage on a smaller base, as seen with our competitors." He emphasized AWS's continued capacity to generate additional revenue and expand its market leadership.
This impressive growth was supported by new partnerships with notable companies and organizations, including Salesforce, BlackRock, Perplexity, and the U.S. Air Force.
Jassy noted that a larger portion of the top 500 U.S. startups now rely on AWS as their primary cloud provider, surpassing the combined usage of the next two competitors. He mentioned, "We are consistently enhancing our core computing capacity daily."
In the fourth quarter alone, AWS expanded its data center network by adding over a gigawatt of power. Jassy also pointed out that many enterprises are migrating their infrastructure to the cloud, further bolstered by the ongoing AI boom, which is benefiting from AWS's comprehensive AI stack.
"Customers prefer to run their AI workloads alongside their applications and data on AWS," Jassy explained, adding that running substantial AI workloads on AWS contributes to the overall growth of their core services.
AWS accounted for 16.6% of Amazon's total revenue of $213.4 billion in the fourth quarter.
Despite this success, Amazon's shares experienced a 10% decline in after-hours trading as investors reacted to the company's plans to increase capital expenditures and missed earnings expectations.
