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2023 Gartner Report Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services

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Amazon CEO: AWS’ $100B Run Rate ‘More Than Any Other Cloud Provider’

‘We watched the incremental revenue added each quarter, and in Q4 AWS added more than $1.1 billion in incremental quarter-over-quarter revenue, which on an FX (foreign exchange) neutral basis is more than any other cloud provider, as far as we can tell,’ says Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

Growth in Amazon Web Services revenue in fiscal 2023 of 13 percent over fiscal 2022 is giving AWS an annualized revenue run rate of $100 billion, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told financial analysts Thursday.

Jassy, during his prepared remarks at Amazon’s fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2023 quarterly financial presentation, said growth in AWS revenue is helping the company beat its cloud competition.

“We watched the incremental revenue added each quarter, and in Q4 AWS added more than $1.1 billion in incremental quarter-over-quarter revenue, which on an FX (foreign exchange) neutral basis is more than any other cloud provider, as far as we can tell,” he told investors.

[Related: AWS re:Invent 2023: The 10 Biggest New Product Launches ]

Even as AWS continued to work on cost optimization, the company also accelerated larger new deals with customers including Salesforce, BMW, Nvidia, LG, Hyundai, Merck, MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group), Axiata Group Berhad, and several other global enterprises, Jassy said.

“Our customer pipeline remains strong as existing customers are renewing at larger commitments over longer periods, and migrations are growing,” he said.

The year 2023 was also a significant year of delivery and customer trial for GenAI in AWS, Jassy said.

AWS has in the past discussed its vision of three distinct layers in the GenAI stack , each of which is large and each of which the company has invested deeply, Jassy said.

At the bottom layer are customers building their own models and running training and inference on compute, and AWS offers the most expansive collection of compute instances with Nvidia chips, he said. AWS also has customers looking for AWS to push the price-performance envelope on AI chips, and the company responded with its Graviton4 for generalized CPU chips which he said offer 40 percent more price performance than other x86 CPUs.

“As a result, we built custom AI training chips named Trainium and inference chips named Inferentia,” he said. “At re:Invent, we now have Trainium2 to which offers four times faster training performance and three times more memory capacity versus the first generation of Trainium, enabling advantageous price performance versus alternatives.”

The middle layer is where companies seek to leverage an existing large language model, customize it with their own data, and leverage AWS security and other features, all as a managed service, Jassy said. There, AWS launched its Bedrock AI technology , and has already signed several thousands of customers in a few months, he said.

“The team continues to rapidly iterate on Bedrock, recently delivering capabilities including Guardrails to safeguard what questions applications will answer, knowledge bases to expand models’ knowledge base with retrieval augmented generation or RAG in real time queries, agents to complete multi-step tasks, and fine tuning to keep teaching and refining models, all of which will help customers applications be higher quality and have better customer experiences,” he said.

At the top layer of the AI stack is the application layer, where one of the best early GenAI applications is a coding companion, Jassy said. AWS re:Invent saw the launch of Amazon Q, which he called an expert on AWS which writes, debugs and tests code; manages such translations as moving from an old to a new version of Java; and query customers’ various data repositories intranets, wikis, or over 40 different popular data connectors in Salesforce, Amazon S3, ServiceNow, Slack, Atlassian, or others, he said.

“It was designed with security and privacy in mind from the start, making it easier for organizations to use generative AI safely,” he said. “Q is the most capable work assistant, and another service that customers are very excited about. By the way, don't underestimate the point about Bedrock and Q inheriting the same security and access control as customers get with AWS. Security is a big deal and an important differentiator between cloud providers. The data in these models is some of a company's most sensitive and critical assets. With AWS’ advantage in security capabilities and track record relative to other providers, we continue to see momentum around customers wanting to do their long term GenAI work with AWS.”

GenAI is and will continue to be an area of pervasive focus and investment across Amazon, Jassy said.

“[This is] primarily because there are few initiatives, if any, that give us the chance to reinvent so many of our customer experiences and processes, and we believe it will ultimately drive 10s of billions of dollars of revenue for Amazon over the next several years,” he said.

Amazon By The Numbers

For its fourth fiscal quarter 2023, which ended December 31, Amazon reported revenue of $169.96 billion, up 13.9 percent over the $149.20 billion the company reported for fiscal fourth quarter 2022.

This included product revenue of $76.70 billion, up 8.7 percent over last year’s $70.53 billion, and service revenue of $93.26 billion, up 18.5 percent over last year’s $78.67 billion.

Included in the total revenue was AWS sales of $24.20 billion, up 13.2 percent over last year’s $21.38 billion. AWS accounted for about 14 percent of Amazon’s total revenue.

For the quarter, Amazon reported a net income of $10.62 billion or $1.00 per share, up significantly from last year’s $278 million or 3 cents per share.

For all of fiscal year 2023, Amazon reported total revenue of $574.79 billion, up 11.8 percent over the $513.98 billion the company reported for fiscal 2022.

This included product revenue of $255.90 billion, up 5.6 percent over last year’s $242.90 billion, and service revenue of $318.90 billion, up 17.6 percent over last year’s $271.08 billion.

Included in the total 2023 revenue was AWS sales of $90.76 billion, up 13.3 percent over last year’s $80.10 billion. AWS accounted for about 16 percent of Amazon’s total revenue.

For the year, Amazon reported a net income of $30.43 billion or $2.90 per share, up significantly from last year’s net loss of $2.72 billion or 27 cents per share.

Looking ahead, Amazon said it expects first fiscal quarter 2024 revenue of $138.0 billion to $143.5 billion, or up between 8 percent and 13 percent over first fiscal quarter 2023 revenue.

Amazon reported its fiscal 2023 results after the close of trade Thursday.

Investors seemed to have liked what they heard from Amazon. Prior to close of the trading day, Amazon stock rose 2.63 percent to $159.28 per share with after-hours trading sending shares up 6.99 percent to $170.45.

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Lessons from Amazon’s Early Growth Strategy

If you’re interested in strategies for scaling start-ups, this episode is for you.

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So much has been written about Amazon’s outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it’s the company’s unusual approach to strategy that has captured his scholarly attention. Gupta has spent years studying Amazon’s strategy and its founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos.

In this episode, Gupta shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users, instead of having a narrow focus.

He argues that some of Amazon’s simplest business strategies — like their obsession with customers and insistence on long-term thinking — are approaches that companies, big and small, can emulate.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, leadership, scaling, Jeff Bezos, long-term thinking, customer focus.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: How Jeff Bezos Built One of the World’s Most Valuable Companies (2020)
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• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.

So much has been written about Amazon’s outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it’s the company’s unusual approach to strategy that has captured his scholarly attention.

Gupta has spent years studying Amazon’s strategy and its founder and former CEO, Jeff Bezos.

In this episode, Gupta shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users instead of focusing more narrowly.

And he argues that some of their simplest business strategies – like their obsession with the customer and insistence on long-term thinking – are approaches that companies, big and small, should emulate.

If you’re interested in innovation strategy, this episode is for you. It originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in November 2020. Here it is.

ALISON BEARD:  Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review.  I’m Alison Beard.

If you had to name the most successful business leader alive today, who would you say?  I can’t hear you from my basement podcasting room, but I would bet that for many of you, the answer is Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.  This is a man who over the past 25 years turned his online bookstore startup into a diversified company currently valued at $1.6 trillion.

Amazon is a digital retailing juggernaut, it’s also a web services provider, media producer, and manufacturer of personal technology devices like Kindle and Echo.  Oh, and Bezos also owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin, a space exploration company.  Forbes tells us he is the richest person in the world.

How did he accomplish so much?  How did he change the business landscape?  What mistakes has he made along the way?  A new collection of Bezos’s own writing, which full disclosure, my colleagues at Harvard Business Review Press have published, offer some insights.  Here’s a clip from one speech that’s included.  The book is called Invent and Wander.

And our guest today, who has spent years studying both Amazon and Bezos, is here to talk with me about some of the key themes in it, including the broad drivers of both the company and the CEO’s success.  Sunil Gupta is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and cochair of its executive program, and cochair of its executive program on driving digital strategy, which is also the title of his book.  Sunil, thanks so much for being on the show.

SUNIL GUPTA:  Thank you for having me, Alison.

ALISON BEARD:  So Invent and Wander.  I get that Bezos is inventive.  You know, he created a new way for us to buy things – everything.  How is he also a wonderer?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So he’s full of experiments.  His company and his whole style is known for experimentation, and he says that in so many words that if you want big winners, then you have to be willing to have many failures.  And the argument is, one big winner will take care of a thousand failed experiments.  So I think that’s the wandering part.  But also his experiments are not aimless.  There is a certain thought and process behind what experiments to do and why they will connect to the old, old picture of what Amazon is today.

ALISON BEARD:  And your expertise is in digital strategy.  How does he break the traditional rules of strategy?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So for the longest time the way, at least I was taught in my MBA program and the way we teach to our MBA students and executives, is strategy is about focus.  But if you look at Amazon, Amazon certainly doesn’t look like it’s focusing on anything, so obviously Jeff Bezos missed that class, otherwise it’s a very, very different thing.

And then you’d say, why is it that so called lack of focus strategy seems to be working for Amazon?  And I think the fundamental underlying principle that he’s guiding his whole discussion of strategy is, he’s changed the rules of strategy.  So the old rules of strategy were, the way you gained competitive advantage is by being better or cheaper.  So if I am selling you a car, my car is better of cheaper.  But the inherent assumption in that strategy statement is, I’m selling one product to one customer.  And what Amazon is basically arguing is, the digital economy is all about connection.  We have got to connect products and connect customers.  Let me explain why that is so powerful.

So connecting products, here the idea is, I can sell you, this is a classic razor and blade strategy.  I can sell you a razor cheap in order to make money on the blade.  So I can sell you Kindle cheap in order to make money on the ebooks.  Now, at some level you might say, hey, razor and blade have been around forever.  What’s so unique today?  I think unique today is razor could be in one industry and blades could be in completely different industrys.

So for example, if you look at Amazon’s portfolio of businesses, you sort of say, not only Amazon is an e-commerce player, but also is making movies and TV shows, its own studio.  Well, why does it make sense for an e-commerce player, an online retailer to compete with Hollywood.  Well, Walmart doesn’t make movies.  Macy’s doesn’t make movies?  So why does it make sense for Amazon to make movies?

And I think once you dig into it, the answer becomes clear that the purpose of the movies is to keep and gain the Prime customers. Two day free shipping is fine, but if  you ask me to pay $99 or $119 for two day free shipping, I might start doing the math in my head, and say, OK, how many packages do I expect to get next year?  And is the Prime membership worth it or not?

But once you throw in, in addition to the two-day free shipping, you throw in some TV shows and movies that are uniquely found only on Amazon, I can’t do this math.  And why is Prime customers important to Amazon?  Because Prime customers are more loyal.  They buy three or four times more than the non-Prime customers, and they’re also less price sensitive.

And in fact, Jeff Bezos has said publicly that every time we win a Golden Globe Award for one of our shows, we sell more shoes.  So this is, and he said it in your book, Invent and Wander, also, that we might be the only company in the world which has figured out how winning Golden Globe Awards can actually translate into selling more products on the online commerce.

So this is a great example of the razor being in a very different industry and blade being in another industry.  Take another example.  Amazon has a lending business where they give loans to small and medium enterprises. If Amazon decides to compete with banks tomorrow, Amazon can decide to offer loans to the small merchants at such a low price that banks would never be able to compete.  And why would Amazon be able to do that?  Because Amazon can say, hey, I’m not going to make money on loans, as much money on loans, but I’ll make more money when these businesses, small businesses grow and do more transactions on my marketplace platform.  And I get more commissions.  So again, loan can become my razor in order to help the merchants grow and make money on the transaction and the commission that I get from that.  The moment I make somebody else’s, in this case the banks, core business my razor, they will make a very hard time competing.  So I think that’s the key change, the fundamental rules of strategy and competition in that direction.

The second part of connection is connecting customers, and this is the classic network effect.  So marketplace is a great example of network effects.  The more buyers I have, the more sellers I have.  The more sellers I have, the sellers I have, the more buyers I get, because the buyers can find all the items.  And that becomes flywheel effect, and it becomes a situation where it’s very hard for a new player to complete with Amazon.

ALISON BEARD:  In this diversification that Amazon has done, how have they managed to be good at all of those things?  Because they’re not focused.  You know, they’re not concentrated on an area of specific expertise.  So how have they succeeded when other companies might have failed because they lacked that expertise, or they were spreading themselves too thin?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So I think it depends on how you define focus.  Most of us, when we define focus, we sort of define focus by traditional industry boundaries, that I’m an online retailer, therefore going into some other business is lack of focus.  The way Amazon thinks about is focus on capabilities.

So if you look at it from that point of view, I would argue that Amazon had three fundamental core capabilities.  Number one, it’s highly customer focused, not only in its culture, but also in its capability in terms of how it can actually handle data and leverage data to get customer insight.  The second core capability of Amazon is logistics.  So it’s now a world class logistics player.  It uses really frontier technology, whether it’s key word, robotics, computer vision, in its warehouse to make it much more efficient.

And the third part of Amazon’s skill or the capability is its technology.  And a good example of that is Amazon Web Services, or AWS.  And I think if you look at these three core capabilities, customer focus and the data insight that it gets from that, the logistics capability, and the technology, everything that Amazon is doing is some way or the other connected to it.  In that sense, Amazon, and there’s no lack of focus, in my judgment on Amazon.

Now, if he starts doing, starts making cream cheese tomorrow or starts making airplane engines, then I would say, yes, it’s got a lack of focus.  But one of the other things that Jeff Bezos has said again and again is this notion of work backwards and scale forward.  And what that means is, because you’re customer obsessed, you sort of find ways to satisfy customers, and if that means developing new skills that we don’t have because we are working backwards from what the customer needs are, then we’ll build those skills.

So a good example of that is, when Amazon started building Kindle, Amazon was never in the hardware business.  It didn’t know how to build hardware.  But Bezos realized that as the industry moved, people are beginning to read more and more online, rather, or at least on their devices, rather than the physical paper copy of a book.  So as a result, he says, how do we make it easier for consumers to read it on an electronic version?  And they’re spending three years learning about this capability of hardware manufacturing.  And by the way, Kindle came out long before iPad came out.  And of course, that capability now has helped them launch Echo and many other devices.

ALISON BEARD:  Right.  So it’s the focus on the customer, plus a willingness to go outside your comfort zone, the wander part.

SUNIL GUPTA:  Exactly.

ALISON BEARD:  Yeah.  How would you describe Bezos’s leadership style?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So I think there are at least three parts to it.  One is, he said right from day one that he wants to be a long-term focus.  The second thing is being customer obsessed.  And many times he has said that he can imagine, in the meetings he wants people to imagine an empty chair.  That is basically for the customer. And he says, we are not competitor focused.  We are not product focused.  We are not technology focused.  We are customer focused.  And the third is, willingness to experiment.  And fail, and build that culture in the company that it’s OK to fail.

ALISON BEARD:  What about personally, though?  Is he a hard charger?  Is he an active listener?  What’s it like to be in a room with him?

SUNIL GUPTA:  Oh, he’s certainly a hard charger.  I mean, he’s also the kind of guy, when he hires people, he says, you can work long, hard, or smart.  But at Amazon, you can choose two out of three.  And I think this is similar to many other leaders.  If you look at Steve Jobs, he was also a very hard charging guy.  And I think some people find it exhilarating to work with these kind of leaders.  Some find it very tough.

ALISON BEARD:  Do you think that he communicates differently from other successful CEOs?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So the communication style that he has built in the company is the very famous now, there’s no PowerPoints.  So it’s a very thoughtful discussion.  You write six-page memos, which everybody, when their meeting starts, everybody sits down and actually reads the memo.

In fact, this was a very interesting experience that I had.  One of my students, who was in the executive program, works at Amazon in Germany.  And he is, he was at that point in time thinking of moving to another company and becoming a CEO of that company.  So he said, can I talk to you about this change of career path that I’m thinking about?  I said, sure.  So we set up a time, and five minutes before our call, he sends me an email with a six-page memo.  And I said, well, shouldn’t he have sent this to me before, so I could at least look at it?  He says, no, that’s the Amazon style.  We’ll sit in silence and read it together.  And so I read it together, because then you’re completely focused on it.  And then we can have a conversation.  But this discipline of writing a six-page memo, it’s a very, very unique experience, because you actually have to think through all your arguments.

ALISON BEARD:  You also mentioned the long term focus, and that really stood out for me, too, this idea that he is not at all thinking of next year.  He’s thinking five years out, and sometimes even further.  But as a public company, how has Amazon been able to stick to that?  And is it replicable at other companies?

SUNIL GUPTA:  I think it is replicable.  It requires conviction, and it requires a way to articulate the vision to Wall Street that they can rally behind.  And it’s completely replicable.  There are other examples of companies who have followed a similar strategy.  I mean, Netflix is a good example.  Netflix hadn’t made money for a long period of time.  But they sold the vision of what the future will look like, and Wall Street bought that vision.

Mastercard is exactly the same thing.  Ajay Banga is giving three year guidance to Wall Street saying, this is my three-year plan, because things can change quarter to quarter.  I’m still responsible to tell you what we are doing this quarter, but my strategy will not be guided by what happens today.  It will be guided by the three-year plan that we have.

ALISON BEARD:  There are so many companies now that go public without turning any profit, whereas Amazon now is printing money, and thus able to reinvest and have this grand vision.  So at what point was Bezos able to say, right, we’re going to do it my way?

SUNIL GUPTA:  I think he said it right from day one, except that people probably didn’t believe it.  And in fact, one of the great examples of that was, when he was convinced about AWS, the Amazon Web Services, that was back in the early 2000s, when a majority of the Wall Street was not sure what Jeff Bezos was trying to do, because they say, hey, you are an online retailer.  You have no business being in web services.  That’s the business of IBM.  And that’s a B2B business.  You’re in a B2C business.  Why are you going in there?

And Bezos said, well, we have plenty of practice of being misunderstood.  And we will continue with our passion and vision, because we see the path.  And now he’s proven it again and again why his vision is correct, and I think that could give us more faith and conviction to the Wall Street investors.

SUNIL GUPTA:  Oh, absolutely.  And he’s one of the persons who has his opinion, and you always surround yourself with people better than you.

ALISON BEARD:  How has he managed to attract that talent when it is so fiercely competitive between Google, Facebook, all of these U.S. technology leaders?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So a couple of things I would say.  First of all, it’s always good fun to join a winning team.  And all of us want to join a winning team, so this certainly is on a trajectory which is phenomenal.  It’s like a rocket ship that is taking off and has been taking off for the last 25 years.  So I think that’s certainly attractive to many people, and certainly many hard charging people who want to be on a winning team.

And a second thing is, Amazon’s culture of experimentation and innovation.  That is energizing to a lot of people.  It’s not a bureaucracy where you get bogged down by the processes.  So the two type of decisions that we talked about, he gives you enough leeway to try different things, and is willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into things that may or may not succeed in the future.  And I think that’s very liberating to people who are willing to take on the ownership and build something.

ALISON BEARD:  But don’t all of the tech companies offer that?

SUNIL GUPTA:  They do, but if you think about many other tech companies, they’re much more narrow in focus.  So Facebook is primarily in social media.  Google is primarily in search advertising.  Yes, you have GoogleX, but that’s still a small part of what Google does.  Whereas if you ask yourself what business is Amazon in, there are much broader expansive areas that Amazon has gone into.  So I think the limits, I mean, Amazon does not have that many limits or boundaries as compared to many other businesses in Silicon Valley.

ALISON BEARD:  So let’s talk a little bit about Bezos’s acquisition strategy.  I think the most prominent is probably Whole Foods, but there are many others.  How does he think about the companies that he wants to bring in as opposed to grow organically?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So some acquisitions are areas where he thinks that he can actually benefit and accelerate the vision that he already has.  So for example, the acquisition of Kiva was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the systems that he already put in place in his warehouse.  And logistics and warehouse is a key component or key part of Amazon’s business, and he saw that Kiva already was ahead of the curve in technology that he probably wanted to have that in his own company.  So that was obvious acquisition, because that fits in the existing business.

Whole Foods is kind of a slightly different story, in my judgment, because I some ways, you can argue, why is Amazon, an online player, buying an offline retail store, Whole Foods?  And in fact, they bought it at 27% premium.  So that doesn’t make sense for an online retailer commerce to go to offline channels.  And I think, in fact, part of the reason in my judgment is, it’s not just Whole Foods, but it’s about the food business, per se.  And why is Amazon so interested in food?  In fact, Amazon has been trying this food business, online food delivery for a long period of time without much success.  And Whole Foods was one, another way to try and get access to that particular business.  And why is that so important to Amazon, even though you could argue, food is a low margin business?

And I would say, part of the reason is, food is something, grocery is something that you buy every week, perhaps twice a week.  And if I, as Amazon, can convince you to buy grocery online from Amazon, then I’m creating a habit for you to come onto Amazon every week, perhaps twice a week.  And once you are on Amazon, you will end up buying other products on Amazon.  Whereas if you are buying electronics, you may not come to Amazon every day.

So this is a habit creation activity, and again, it may not be a very high margin activity to sell you food.  But I’ve created a habit, just like Prime.  I’ve created a loyal customer where you think of nothing else but Amazon for your daily needs, and therefore you end up buying other things.

ALISON BEARD:  And Amazon isn’t without controversy.  You know, and we should talk about that, too.  First, there are questions about its treatment of warehouse employees, particularly during COVID.  And Bezos, as you said, has always been relentlessly focused on the customer.  But is Amazon employee centric, too?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So I think there is definitely some areas of concern, and you rightly said there is a significant concern about the, during the COVID, workers were complaining about safety, the right kind of equipment.  But even before COVID, there were a lot of concerns about whether the workers are being pushed too hard.  They barely have any breaks.  And they’re constantly on the go, because speed and efficiency become that much more important to make sure customers always get what they are promised.  And in fact, more than promised.

Clearly Amazon either hasn’t done a good job, or hasn’t at least done the public relations part of it that they have done a good job.  Now, if you ask Jeff Bezos, he will claim that, no, actually, they have done things.  For example, they offer something called carrier choice, where they give 95% tuition to the employees to learn new skills, whether they’re relevant to Amazon or not.  Pretty much like what Starbucks does for its baristas, for college education and other things.  But I think more than just giving money or tuition, it requires a bit of empathy and sense that you care for your employees, and perhaps that needs, that’s something that Amazon needs to work on.

ALISON BEARD:  And another challenge is the criticism that it has decimated mom and pop shops.  Even when someone sells through Amazon, the company will then see that it’s a popular category and create it itself and start selling it itself.  There’s environmental concerns about the fact that packages are being driven from warehouses to front doors all over America.  And boxes and packaging.  So how has Bezos, how has the company dealt with all of that criticism?

SUNIL GUPTA:  They haven’t.  And I think those are absolutely valid concerns on both counts, that the small sellers who grow to become reasonably big are always under the radar, and there are certainly anecdotal evidence there, small sellers have complained that Amazon had decided to sell exactly the same item that they were so successful in selling, and becoming too big is actually not good on Amazon, because Amazon can get into your business and wipe you away.  So that’s certainly a big concern, and I think that’s something that needs to be sorted out, and Amazon needs to clarify what its position on that area is, because it benefits from these small sellers on his platform.

And your second question about environmental issues is also absolutely on the money, because not only emission issues, but there’s so many boxes that pile in, certainly in my basement, from Amazon.  You sort of say, and it’s actually ironical that Millennials who are in love with Amazon are extremely environmentally friendly.  But at the same time, they would not hesitate to order something from Amazon and pile up all these boxes.  So I think Amazon needs to figure out a way to think about both those issues.

ALISON BEARD:  And at what point will it have to?  I mean, it seems to be rolling happily along.

SUNIL GUPTA:  Well, I think those issues are becoming bigger and bigger, and it’s certainly in the eye of the regulators, also, for some of these practices.  And not only because it’s too big, and there might be monopoly concerns, but these issues will become larger, and any time you become a large company, you become the center of attraction for broader issues than just providing shareholder value.

ALISON BEARD:  Yeah.  So those are weaknesses possibly for the company.  What are some of Bezos’s personal weaknesses that you’ve seen in studying him and the company?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So I think one thing that stands out to me, and at least in the public forums, I have not seen any empathy.  And it’s, I mean, we talk about that the leaders have, should have three qualities.  They should be competent.  They should have a good character.  And they should have compassion.  So he’s certainly very competent.  I mean, he’s brilliant in many aspects, right, from the computer vision and AI and machine learning, to the nuances of data analytics, to the Hollywood production, etc.  He also seems to have good character, at least I have not heard any personal scandals, apart from his other issues in his personal life, perhaps.

Those characteristics of competence and character make people respect you.  What makes people love you is when you show compassion, and at least I haven’t seen compassion or empathy that comes out of him.  I mean, he certainly comes across as a very hard charging, driven person, which probably is good for business.  But the question of empathy is perhaps something lacking right now.

ALISON BEARD:  Yeah.  The other issue is his just enormous wealth.  He did invent this colossally valuable company, but should anyone really be that rich?

SUNIL GUPTA:  Well, I guess that’s, you can say that’s the good or the bad thing about capitalism.  But I think, and again, my personal view is there’s nothing wrong in becoming rich, if you have been successful and done it with hard work and ingenuity.  But how you use your wealth is something that perhaps will define Jeff Bezos going forward.  I think Bill Gates is a great example how he actually has used his wealth and his influence and his expertise and his brilliance into some certain thing that actually is great for humanity.

Now, whether Jeff Bezos does that down the road, I don’t know, whether his space exploration provides that sort of outlet which is both his passion as well as good for humanity, I don’t know.  But at some point in time, I think it’s the responsibility of these leaders to sort of say, my goal is not simply to make money and make my shareholders rich, but also help humanity and help society.

ALISON BEARD:  If you’re talking to someone who’s running a startup, or even a manager of a team at a traditional company, what is the key lesson that you would say, this is what you can learn from Jeff Bezos?  This is what you can put to work in your own profession?

SUNIL GUPTA:  So I would say two things that at least I would take away if I were doing a startup.  One is customer obsession.  Now, every company says that, but honestly, not every company does it, because if you go to the management meetings, if you go to the quarterly meetings, you suddenly go focus on financials and competition and product.  But there’s rarely any conversation on customers.  And I think, as I mentioned earlier, that Jeff Bezos always tells his employee to think of the imaginary chair in which a customer is sitting, because that’s the person that we need to focus on.  Howard Shultz does the same thing at Starbucks, and that’s why Starbucks is so customer focused.

So I think that’s the first part.  And the argument that Bezos gives is, customers are never satisfied.  And that pushes us to innovate and move forward, so we need to innovate even before the rest of the world even sees that, because customers are the first ones to see what is missing in the offering that you have.

And the second I would say that I would take away from Jeff Bezos is the conviction and passion with what you do.  And many times that goes against the conventional wisdom.  And the Amazon Web Services is a great example of that.  The whole world, including the Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street analysts were saying, this is none of Amazon’s business to do web services.  But he was convinced that this is the right thing to do, and he went and did that.

And part of that conviction may come from experiments.  Part of that conviction comes from connecting the dots that he could see that many other people didn’t see.  I mean, that’s why he went, left his job, and went to Seattle to do the online bookstore, because he could see the macro trends as to what the Internet is likely to do.  So, I think that’s the vision that he had.  And once you have the conviction, then you follow your passion.

ALISON BEARD: Sunil, thanks so much for coming on the show.

SUNIL GUPTA:  Thank you for having me. Alison.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta, in conversation with Alison Beard on the HBR IdeaCast .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

And when you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. And special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Nicole Smith, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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Nasdaq and AWS Partner to Transform Capital Markets

Nasdaq Will Begin Migrating Markets to AWS Starting in 2022

Co-Designed Edge Computing Solution Offers On-Ramp for Global Capital Markets to Migrate to AWS

Nasdaq’s Primary Data Center Becomes First-Ever Private AWS Local Zone for Capital Markets

LAS VEGAS , Nov. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, at AWS re:Invent, Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com Inc. company (Nasdaq: AMZN), announced a multi-year partnership to build the next generation of cloud-enabled infrastructure for the world’s capital markets.

Beginning in 2022, Nasdaq plans to migrate its North American markets to AWS in a phased approach, starting with Nasdaq MRX, a U.S. options market. Nasdaq will use a new edge computing solution that is co-designed by Nasdaq and AWS and specifically developed for market infrastructure. This solution may also be used by other market infrastructure operators and market participants to move their trading systems to the cloud. In addition, the partnership will include opportunities to explore new ways to leverage AWS’s cloud capabilities across Nasdaq’s anti-financial crime, data and analytics, and market infrastructure software solutions.

“This landmark partnership with AWS seeks to power a truly cloud-based market infrastructure that is more resilient, scalable, and accessible for all market participants,” said Adena Friedman , President and CEO, Nasdaq . “For over a decade, Nasdaq has used the elasticity and high security of AWS to deliver client-driven solutions. Our innovative, new collaboration with AWS creates a bridge to the future for our markets and represents the next major step forward in Nasdaq’s cloud journey.”

“Together, Nasdaq and AWS will change what’s possible for capital markets organizations, helping them to speed up innovation and improve business processes,” said Adam Selipsky , CEO of Amazon Web Services, Inc . “Combining Nasdaq’s 50 years of expertise in pioneering technology for capital markets with the proven security, reliability, and resilience of the world’s leading cloud will help our joint customers and Nasdaq to continue to grow their businesses and seamlessly transact billions of dollars in trades per day. Our partnership will give Nasdaq a way to more easily move their core infrastructure to the cloud and innovate new services as they continue their second decade of cloud adoption.”

Building the Capital Markets Infrastructure of the Future

Core to Nasdaq’s move to AWS will be AWS Outposts , which extend AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility. Nasdaq plans to incorporate AWS Outposts directly into its core network to deliver ultra-low-latency edge compute capabilities from its primary data center in Carteret, New Jersey . This co-designed edge computing solution would effectively establish Nasdaq’s data center as the first-ever private AWS Local Zone for the capital markets industry.

Over time, Nasdaq plans to move additional North American markets to the cloud with AWS. This hybrid infrastructure would provide Nasdaq with low-latency access to its on-premises systems to deliver high-frequency trading capabilities, as well as give its clients access to cloud-based capabilities, including virtual connectivity services, market analytics and machine learning, at a lower cost. Nasdaq expects this migration to the cloud to enable the adoption of new services and products in a manner that unlocks value and provides its clients with added flexibility.

Advancing Cloud-enabled Market Technology Solutions for the Global Economy

For the 130+ market infrastructure clients – spanning exchanges, banks, clearing houses, central securities depositories and regulators – that rely upon Nasdaq for their core trading, clearing, settlement, and surveillance technology today, Nasdaq plans to partner with AWS to develop viable cloud choices that include public-cloud and hybrid models. 

Nasdaq also intends to leverage its cloud journey for its own markets, coupled with the growing number of AWS Local Zones around the world, and the collective technology portfolios of the partnership, to create a migration blueprint for its market technology clients using a combination of public cloud and edge compute options.

Nasdaq expects that migrating to the cloud will give its market infrastructure clients added agility and help them rapidly adjust to ever-changing industry dynamics in their countries and regions.

Nasdaq’s Cloud Strategy: A Decades-long Journey for an Interconnected Future

For 50 years, Nasdaq has reimagined markets to realize the potential of tomorrow. After pioneering electronic markets half a century ago, Nasdaq developed the highest performance messaging protocols in the early 2000s, which now serve as the de-facto industry standard for ultra-low latency trading. In addition, Nasdaq was one of the first exchange operators to commercialize its technology, and started using AWS technology in 2008. Today, Nasdaq’s technology solutions drive high performance, transparency, efficiency, and integrity across the transaction lifecycle at market infrastructure operators—exchanges, central counterparty clearing houses, central securities depositories, and regulators—in over 50 countries.

As Nasdaq looks to redefine the market technology of the future and tackle the transformation of its core infrastructure for the decades ahead, it is committed to creating an interconnected future – one that is safer and stronger for everyone, in the cloud.

To learn more, visit www.nasdaq.com/cloud .

NOTE TO EDITORS

Carteret Data Center : Nasdaq’s primary data center for its U.S. Equities and Options Markets is located in the Equinix NY11 facility in Carteret, NJ .

Edge Computing: Edge computing moves data storage, processing, and analysis closer to endpoints where data is generated to deliver near-real-time responsiveness for high-performance applications. AWS’s managed edge hardware and services extend secure edge computing capabilities to customer endpoints, allowing them to deploy APIs and tools outside of AWS data centers in metro areas, 5G networks, on-premises locations, and on ruggedized devices.

Financial Terms: Nasdaq expects expenses and investments associated with this partnership to be consistent with our existing capital allocation framework and non-GAAP operating expense guidance, while supporting growth opportunities over the long-term.

Nasdaq MRX: Nasdaq MRX is one of six U.S. options markets operated by Nasdaq. Nasdaq MRX offers both a simple customer priority, pro-rata allocation market and a price-time complex market, complete with a full suite of auction and crossing orders.

Options Markets: Nasdaq operates six options markets in the U.S. , including Nasdaq MRX, to buy and sell options on equity and ETF securities with unique market models that cater to different segments of the options market.

AWS Local Zones: AWS Local Zones are a type of AWS infrastructure deployment that places compute, storage, database, and other select AWS services close to large population and industry centers. They allow AWS customers to use select AWS services, like compute and storage services, closer to more end-users, providing them very low latency access to applications running locally. Nasdaq and AWS plan to establish a private AWS Local Zone within the Equinix NY11 data center in Carteret that is available for Nasdaq’s use only.

About Nasdaq

Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) is a global technology company serving the capital markets and other industries. Our diverse offering of data, analytics, software, and services enables clients to optimize and execute their business vision with confidence. To learn more about the company, technology solutions and career opportunities, visit us on LinkedIn, on Twitter @Nasdaq, or at www.nasdaq.com .

About Amazon Web Services

For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 81 Availability Zones within 25 geographic regions, with announced plans for 27 more Availability Zones and nine more AWS Regions in Australia , Canada , India , Indonesia , Israel , New Zealand , Spain , Switzerland , and the United Arab Emirates . Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com .

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company , Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon , AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing , Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios , and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon . For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

Forward-Looking Statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements with respect to the formation of a partnership between Nasdaq and AWS and the benefits of the partnership, and statements about Nasdaq and AWS and their respective plans, objectives, expectations, intentions, products and offerings. When used in this communication, words such as "intends", "plans", "will", “believes”, "expected”, “projected” and similar expressions and any other statements that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking statements. We caution that these statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties or other factors beyond the control of Nasdaq and AWS. These factors include, but are not limited to, factors detailed in each of Nasdaq’s and Amazon’s respective annual report on Form 10-K and other periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission . The forward-looking statements included in this communication are made only as of the date hereof. Nasdaq and AWS disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Nasdaq Non-GAAP Information

In addition to disclosing financial information determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, Nasdaq also discloses certain non-GAAP results of operations, including, but not limited to, non-GAAP operating expenses, that include certain adjustments or exclude certain charges and gains that are described in the reconciliation table of U.S. GAAP to non-GAAP information provided at ir.nasdaq.com/Income-Statement-Trend-Summary-and-GAAP-to-Non-GAAP-Reconciliation . U.S. GAAP operating expense guidance is not provided by Nasdaq due to the inherent difficulty in quantifying certain amounts due to a variety of factors including the unpredictability in the movement in foreign currency rates, as well as future charges or reversals outside of the normal course of business. Nasdaq’s management uses non-GAAP information internally, along with U.S. GAAP information, in evaluating Nasdaq’s performance and in making financial and operational decisions. Nasdaq believes its presentation of these measures provides investors with greater transparency and supplemental data relating to Nasdaq’s financial condition and results of operations. These measures are not in accordance with, or an alternative to, U.S. GAAP, and may be different from non-GAAP measures used by other companies.

Nasdaq Media Contacts:

Marleen Geerlof +1 (347) 380-3520 [email protected]

Will Briganti +1 (646) 964-8169 [email protected]

Bianca Fata +1 (646) 895-5851 [email protected]

Yan-yan Tong+1 (240) 721-8066 [email protected]

Nasdaq Investor Contact:

Ed Ditmire , CFA+1 (212) 401-8737 [email protected]

Amazon /AWS Media Contacts:

Amazon.com, Inc. Media Hotline [email protected] www.amazon.com/pr

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at  https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e9dd3dda-36f4-4ef4-a21d-b8121287d277

Today, at AWS re:Invent, Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com Inc. company (Nasdaq: AMZN), announced a multi-year partnership to build the next generation of cloud-enabled infrastructure for the world’s capital markets.

Source: Nasdaq, Inc.

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Amazon will share its Q1 2024 earnings on April 30

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Amazon will hold a conference call to discuss its Q1 2024 financial results on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, at 2:30 p.m. PT/5:30 p.m. ET.

The event will be webcast live, and the audio and associated slides will be available for at least three months thereafter at www.amazon.com/ir .

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Simplifying ordering, and helping create a balance between empowerment and speed of delivery.

Getting started with Amazon Web Services

Stephanie de Albequerque, Community Manager, AWS shares the history of cloud computing, how we engage with cloud computing today, and the resources available to you as a small business within AWS.

Cloud Computing Basics

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet with a pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider, such as Amazon Web Services. You can think of the cloud like paying for your electricity bill. You pay for what you use - when you switch off the lights, you're no longer paying for it. This in contrast with traditional data centers. You don't need to provision IT resources months in advance. You don't need to keep assets that you don't need anymore. And there's far less need to forecast the demand for your IT resources because you can provision them in a matter of minutes.

Since its introduction over 16 years ago, AWS has been supporting businesses to become more agile in how they access IT resources, helping them save costs, increase agility and improve their security posture. You might not notice, but you're interacting with cloud technologies on a daily basis - from watching your favorite show on Netflix to the stats you see on the screen during a NFL game. These businesses are using  AWS cloud technology to power some of their most innovative features. These same resources are available to businesses of all sizes with the click of a button. Cloud is the great equalizer, giving businesses of any size access to the technology and services that enable you to respond to new industry dynamics, test new ideas, and bring products and services to market quickly.

Today, cloud computing has helped make IT resources more readily available . Learn about how you can get started with AWS and cloud computing as a small business below.

AWS Connected Community

Determining how to best use technology to create a competitive advantage is challenging, and identifying trusted resources adds to the burden. Successful businesses of any size, find joining a community of like-minded business leaders is an efficient way to get relevant information to facilitate the cloud decision journey.

That’s why AWS created the AWS Connected Community as the first cloud community for business leaders to connect, learn, and share—overcoming the common barriers of technology adoption, together. The AWS Connected Community brings together years of AWS expertise and the unique perspective of small and medium-sized businesses to give you an uncomplicated and interactive place to support your digital transformation.

Completely free to join and built specifically for businesses of your size, the AWS Connected Community is another way AWS helps you build a better business—securely, swiftly, collaboratively.

The AWS Connected Community offers the following benefits:

• A completely free to join community specifically for small and medium-sized businesses 
• Access to small business and cloud experts
• Up-to-date events and on-demand training 
• Opportunity to learn from peers 
• Exclusive offers for software and services tailored to your business needs

Learn more about the AWS Connected Community

AWS SkillBuilder

Get digital training and learn from AWS experts through AWS SkillBuilder.

Skill Builders is a Digital Training Library consists of over 500 courses, which are available on demand, anytime, anywhere. This includes foundational and advanced content across AWS services and solutions ML, IoT, Storage, and more. Because it is developed and built by AWS experts it is accurate , which ensures you use and deploys AWS services the right way.

Skill builder has digital training that is designed to meet your various needs:

• Expertise level: foundational, intermediate, and advanced.
• Role-based training, for example for AWS Architects, Developers, and Systems Operations.
• Domain-specific, such as Machine Learning , Storage, Internet of Things and much more. 

Visit skillbuilder.aws to learn more about our Digital Training.

Learn more at AWS Skillbuilder  

AWS Free Tier  

Get free, hands-on experience with the AWS platform, products, and services. If you are ready to get started using AWS,you can create an account and explore more than 100 products and start building on AWS using the Free Tier.. AWS Free Tier Benefits:

• Automatically activated for new AWS accounts
• Enjoy free-tier offers for 12-months following your initial sign-up date to AWS
• Applicable to 100 services * 

Learn more about the AWS Free Tier

*Not all AWS Services are covered under the Free Tier, check the Free Tier offering to make sure the services you intend to use are covered

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Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Results

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul. 28, 2022-- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2022.

• Operating cash flow  decreased 40% to $35.6 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $59.3 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2021.
• Free cash flow  decreased to an outflow of $23.5 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an inflow of $12.1 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2021.
• Free cash flow less principal repayments of finance leases and financing obligations  decreased to an outflow of $33.5 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an inflow of $0.6 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2021.
• Free cash flow less equipment finance leases and principal repayments of all other finance leases and financing obligations  decreased to an outflow of $26.1 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with an inflow of $4.2 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2021.
• Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards  totaled 10.6 billion on June 30, 2022, compared with 10.4 billion one year ago. All share and per share information throughout this release has been retroactively adjusted to reflect the 20-for-1 stock split effected on May 27, 2022.
• Net sales  increased 7% to $121.2 billion in the second quarter, compared with $113.1 billion in second quarter 2021. Excluding the $3.6 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 10% compared with second quarter 2021.
• Operating income  decreased to $3.3 billion in the second quarter, compared with $7.7 billion in second quarter 2021.
• Net loss  was $2.0 billion in the second quarter, or $0.20 per diluted share, compared with net income of $7.8 billion, or $0.76 per diluted share, in second quarter 2021. Second quarter 2022 net loss includes a pre-tax valuation loss of $3.9 billion included in non-operating expense from our common stock investment in Rivian Automotive, Inc.

“Despite continued inflationary pressures in fuel, energy, and transportation costs, we’re making progress on the more controllable costs we referenced last quarter, particularly improving the productivity of our fulfillment network,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO. “We’re also seeing revenue accelerate as we continue to make Prime even better for members, both investing in faster shipping speeds, and adding unique benefits such as free delivery from Grubhub for a year, exclusive access to NFL  Thursday Night Football  games starting September 15, and releasing the highly anticipated series  The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power  on September 2.”

Shopping Innovation

• Prime members worldwide shopped more and saved more this Prime Day than any other Prime Day event, purchasing more than 300 million items and saving more than $1.7 billion. On July 12 and July 13, Prime members worldwide purchased more than 100,000 items per minute, and some of the best-selling categories were Amazon Devices, Consumer Electronics, and Home. Amazon Devices had a record-breaking Prime Day, selling more devices than any other Prime Day event.
• Prime continued to provide even more value to members around the world. In the U.S., Amazon introduced new offers for Prime members, including a free one-year Grubhub+ membership, a new year-round 20% discount on select everyday essentials at Amazon Fresh stores, and exclusive deals on home entertainment items and merchandise to help prepare for NFL  Thursday Night Football . Additionally, Prime Student members get six months free of a LinkedIn Premium subscription.
• Amazon introduced new ways for customers to support and discover small businesses selling in Amazon’s store, including the Small Business Badge, which helps customers find and shop products from small business brands and artisans, and  This Is Small Business , a new podcast dedicated to sharing stories from small business owners about pivotal moments in starting, building, and scaling their businesses. This year was also the biggest Prime Day event for Amazon’s selling partners, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses, whose sales growth in Amazon’s store outpaced Amazon’s first-party sales. Customers spent over $3 billion on more than 100 million small business items included in the Support Small Businesses to Win Big sweepstakes, which offered customers the chance to win prizes when shopping from small businesses leading up to Prime Day.
• Amazon continues to invent new fashion shopping experiences for customers, launching Virtual Try-On for Shoes, where shoppers can virtually try on thousands of sneaker styles, and Luxury Stores at Amazon in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, where customers can shop established and emerging luxury fashion brands online. Amazon Style, Amazon’s first-ever physical store for apparel, opened in Glendale, California, to help customers discover new looks through a personalized shopping experience. Amazon Style uses machine learning algorithms to produce tailored recommendations for customers as they shop. In the fitting room, customers can use touchscreens to browse more options and request additional styles and sizes. Amazon also expanded its selection of size-inclusive fashion to include a collection from designer Jonathan Cohen and a new co-brand between Amazon and  Making The Cut  Season Two winner Andrea Pitter called TEREA.
• Amazon announced that later this year, Amazon customers in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas, will be among the first to receive Prime Air drone deliveries in the U.S. Customers will have the option to receive free and fast drone delivery on thousands of everyday items—the largest selection of items ever to be available for drone delivery.
• Amazon continues to collaborate with leading retailers and stadiums to equip third-party locations with Just Walk Out technology for checkout-free shopping and Amazon One for palm recognition and payment service. Recent store openings include the Walk-Off Market food and beverage store at T-Mobile Park in Seattle and the Hudson Nonstop store in Nashville International Airport. Additionally, three stores will open at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field later this year. The combination of technologies gives shoppers the option to enter a store by inserting their credit card at the entry gate or hovering their palm over an Amazon One device. Once inside, shoppers can take what they want and leave without stopping to check out.
• Amazon continued to expand its grocery store footprint by opening 12 Amazon Fresh stores across the U.S. and the UK, and introduced new innovations to improve the shopping experience for customers, including the next generation Amazon Dash Cart. Amazon Dash Cart is a smart shopping cart that uses computer vision algorithms and sensor fusion to help identify items placed in a cart, so customers can skip the checkout line when they are done shopping. With the new Dash Cart, which is also expanding to its first Whole Foods Market store, shoppers can fit more items into their cart, bring the cart to their car, and easily search for specific items on the cart’s screen.
• Amazon announced Store Analytics, a new service that provides brands with aggregated and anonymized insights about the performance of their products, promotions, and ad campaigns in applicable stores. Store Analytics is available at Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S. that are enabled with Just Walk Out technology and Amazon Dash Carts.
• Amazon continues to improve its shopping experience for U.S. customers who use SNAP EBT, the federal program that helps families purchase groceries. The company expanded the program so that beneficiaries in 48 states and Washington, D.C.—covering more than 99% of SNAP households—can now use their SNAP benefits to shop for groceries at  Amazon.com , Amazon Fresh, and Whole Foods Market.
• Amazon released its second Brand Protection Report, which details how the company safeguards customers, brands, and selling partners from counterfeit products. Amazon identified, seized, and appropriately disposed of more than 3 million counterfeit products, preventing them from harming customers or being resold elsewhere in the retail supply chain. In 2021, the company employed more than 12,000 people and invested more than $900 million to protect its store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse so customers can continue to shop with confidence.
• Amazon filed legal action against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products. These groups are set up to recruit individuals willing to post incentivized and misleading reviews on Amazon’s stores in the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Amazon will use information discovered from this legal action to identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by these fraudsters that haven’t already been detected by Amazon’s advanced technology, expert investigators, and continuous monitoring.
• Amazon Ads launched Amazon Marketing Stream (Beta), a product that automatically delivers hourly Sponsored Products campaign metrics to advertisers or agencies through the Amazon Ads API. The Stream provides near real-time performance insights to enable more effective campaign optimization, more agility in responding to campaign changes, and increased operational efficiency to help drive business growth for advertisers.
• The second re:MARS conference took place in Las Vegas, and Amazon welcomed nearly 7,000 attendees, in person and virtually, to hear from top academics and experts in machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. This year’s event featured innovations from across Amazon, along with demos of Amazon’s Just Walk Out Experiential Mock Store, Boston Dynamics’ Spot® agile robot on AWS, Alexa Smart Home featuring the Astro household robot, and the Lunar Outpost lunar surface rover built on AWS.

Entertainment

• Former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick and All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman will join Pro Football Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez as analysts for Prime Video’s NFL  Thursday Night Football  pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage. Veteran sports anchor Charissa Thompson will host the shows. Legendary sportscaster Al Michaels and Emmy-winning analyst Kirk Herbstreit will call the live action games.
• Prime Video received 30 Emmy nominations, and MGM received seven nominations. Prime Video’s nominations included  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ,  Lucy and Desi ,  Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls ,  The Academy of Country Music Awards ,  The Boys Presents: Diabolical ,  Goliath ,  Savage X Fenty Show , and  A Very British Scandal . MGM’s nominations included  Vikings: Valhalla ,  The Voice ,  Shark Tank , and  Survivor .
• The Boys  continued to grow its audience with the debut of Season Three. Over its premiere weekend, the Emmy-nominated superhero drama increased its worldwide audience by 234% from Season One and 17% from Season Two.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power  continued to build anticipation in the lead-up to premiere. The release of new images, a teaser trailer, and a 60-second sneak peek for Prime members on Prime Day all preceded the debut of a highly anticipated three-minute trailer at San Diego Comic-Con. The long trailer was unveiled to a crowd of 6,500 fans during a panel with the show’s cast—moderated by Stephen Colbert—in the convention’s largest venue before being released globally.  The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power  launches exclusively on Prime Video in 240 countries and territories and 33 different languages on September 2.
• Prime Video debuted five new Original series:  The Terminal List , starring Chris Pratt;  The Summer I Turned Pretty; Chloe ;  The One That Got Away ; and  Forever Summer: Hamptons.  In addition, adult animated series  Undone  and  Fairfax  each returned for second seasons. Prime Video premiered three new Original movies: Sundance Film Festival award-winner  Emergency;   Don’t Make Me Go , starring John Cho and Mia Isaac; and  Anything’s Possible , directed by Billy Porter.
• Prime Video’s robust international slate grew with the debut of more than 25 local Originals and live sporting events. New global programming includes  Yosi, the Regretful Spy  (Argentina),  The Kids in the Hall  (Canada),  Modern Love Mumbai  (India),  Bang Bang Baby  (Italy), and  Lovestruck High  (UK). Sports programming includes Roland-Garros French Open tennis in France, the Australian Swimming Championships, and live boxing in Japan.
• The ad-supported, free streaming content service Amazon Freevee received its first major award win for  Judy Justice , starring Judge Judy Sheindlin, which earned a Daytime Emmy. Freevee also premiered three new Original series— Bosch: Legacy,  one of the 10 most-streamed shows across all services in May, according to streaming hub Reelgood; crime drama  Troppo;  and home-renovation series  Hollywood Houselift with Jeff Lewis —and one Original film,  Love Accidentally .
• Prime Video Channels expanded its portfolio to offer more premium Spanish-language content with the addition of Vix+, TelevisaUnivisions’ streaming service. Prime Video Channels offer customers additional paid subscriptions to third-party premium networks and other streaming entertainment channels, such as discovery+, Paramount+, AMC+, Globo, BET+, NBA League Pass, MLB.TV, STARZ, and SHOWTIME.
• Amazon Music brought epic live performances to customers streaming on the Amazon Music Twitch channel and on Prime Video, including performances from global superstars Maluma and Carrie Underwood, as well as Pharrell Williams’ Something In The Water festival, which featured Tyler The Creator, Jon Batiste, Pusha T, and Pharrell Williams.
• Amazon’s podcast streaming service, Wondery, partnered with Dolby Atmos, an audio technology provider, to become the first such service in the U.S. to deliver immersive audio. Dolby Atmos-enabled titles will be available to stream exclusively on the Wondery+ subscription service in 30 countries. Wondery also brought more original content to its global audience, including local-language translations of the investigative series  Harsh Reality: The Story of Miriam Rivera;   Business Wars  in Spain and Italy; and original dating show  Queen of Hearts  worldwide.
• Audible signed a deal with President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, to create a slate of Audible shows. This new partnership reflects the companies’ shared mission to tell meaningful and entertaining stories that elevate diverse voices and experiences.

Devices and Services

• Automakers continue to launch Alexa integrations in new vehicle models, including the 2023 Acura Integra, 2023 GM Equinox, and 2022 Lucid Air. With Alexa Built-in, customers can ask Alexa to navigate, play music and audiobooks, share the news, check the weather, control smart home devices, pay for gas, and find parking. Customers can also remotely control their vehicle from home by asking Alexa to lock or unlock the car doors, check gas levels or charging range, and start or stop the engine. These automakers join other companies with existing integrations such as Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Jaguar-Land Rover, Jeep, Mahindra, Rivian, and Volkswagen.
• Amazon added new features to Alexa Together, a service that helps aging family members feel more comfortable and confident living independently. Up to 10 caregivers can remotely support their aging loved one’s Alexa devices from afar with the Circle of Support feature, and the Remote Assist feature allows caregivers to remotely set up Alexa Routines, such as locking the door and turning off the lights at a certain time of night.
• Amazon launched new features to make Alexa smarter, more proactive, and more personal. Customers can now opt in to receive proactive notifications from Alexa about their favorite sports team, weather updates in their area, and when it’s time to refill their prescriptions. Additionally, Call Captioning, which shows captions on Echo Show devices during Alexa video calls, now supports Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
• Amazon now has over 1 million registered developers, brands, and device makers building with Alexa. The company continues to invent new ways for these builders to increase revenue and customer engagement, including the Alexa Routines Kit, which enables developers to configure and offer Alexa Routines to customers when they interact with a skill. For example, developers can integrate their skills into a customer’s morning routine, along with other Alexa experiences like smart home controls and music.
• Amazon introduced the next generation of Fire 7 and Fire 7 Kids, bringing more speed, performance, and value to the company’s most popular and affordable tablet.
• Amazon introduced new smart TVs with Fire TV built-in from Hisense and Xiaomi. With Fire TV built-in, customers get a content-driven viewing experience, a simple and intuitive user interface, Alexa, and hands-free TV control.
• Blink launched the first Blink Video Doorbell in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK.

Amazon Web Services

• Travel and hospitality:  Delta Air Lines  selected AWS as preferred cloud provider to accelerate its digital business transformation and reimagine the travel experience. Using AWS, Delta will deliver new digital travel services, streamline its operations, enhance customer service from the booking process to the flight experience, and provide cloud training to employees globally.  
• Media and entertainment:  Riot Games  and AWS have teamed up to bring AWS’s data analytics integration to esports broadcasts for the first time, through Riot’s  League of Legends ,  VALORANT , and  League of Legends: Wild Rift  esports leagues. AWS will also power Riot’s new cloud-first remote broadcast centers, which will support Riot’s current and future ambitions to reimagine entertainment experiences for billions of fans worldwide.  
• Telecommunications: The UK’s largest telecommunications company,  BT , selected AWS as preferred cloud provider to transform legacy infrastructure and internal applications to a new cloud-first architecture. This will simplify BT’s current information technology (IT) footprint, enabling it to more rapidly serve customers and reducing costs in IT maintenance.  
• Financial services:   Investment banking firm  Jefferies  will migrate all its IT systems to AWS, including internal and customer-facing applications, IT resources, and companywide data, as it looks to modernize its technology infrastructure, accelerate new digital services, realize operational efficiencies, and increase security and reliability.  
• Health care and life sciences: Health and wellness organization  Geisinger  selected AWS as its strategic cloud provider. Geisinger will migrate its entire digital portfolio of more than 400 applications and numerous workflows to AWS, which will enable lifesaving technologies and save Geisinger several million dollars annually.  
• Manufacturing: Sweden-based  SKF , the leading manufacturer of bearings, collaborated with AWS to launch a fully automated, condition-monitoring solution for industrial machine reliability and predictive maintenance. This helps manufacturers monitor equipment, detect anomalies, and avoid unexpected machine failures in their facilities.  
• Energy: Italian multinational energy company  Eni  worked with AWS to integrate its proprietary data platform XWARE with the built-for-the-cloud Open Subsurface Data Universe on AWS to increase interoperability between applications, enabling accelerated data exchange, enhanced security, and deeper insights. Using AWS’s machine learning, business intelligence, and storage capabilities, Australia’s  Electric Mine Consortium  built the world’s first mining data platform for the creation of a cleaner, more electrified future in mining. The platform will drive decarbonization among mining companies, accelerate the electrification of mine sites at scale, and capture real-time information on mine decarbonization globally.  
• AWS continues to innovate in generalized central processing units (CPUs) and announced the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C7g instances, the next generation of compute-optimized instances powered by AWS-designed Graviton3 processors. Graviton3 processors provide up to 25% better performance for compute-intensive applications than C6g instances powered by AWS Graviton2 processors, which deliver up to 40% better price performance over comparable current generation x86-based instances. Graviton3 processors also use up to 60% less energy for the same performance than comparable EC2 instances.  
• AWS continues to transform how customers perform analytics by offering serverless options for Amazon Redshift, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), and Amazon EMR. Serverless options take the guesswork out of configuring infrastructure at any scale, so enterprises can expand the use of analytics in their organizations without needing to configure, scale, or manage the underlying infrastructure.  
• AWS announced the general availability of AWS Mainframe Modernization, as it further expands support for every type of workload. AWS Mainframe Modernization makes it faster and easier for customers to modernize mainframe-based workloads by moving them to the cloud, with no upfront costs or underlying infrastructure to manage.  
• AWS announced the general availability of AWS Cloud WAN, a managed wide area network service that makes it faster and easier to build, manage, and monitor a unified network that spans multiple locations and seamlessly connects cloud and on-premises environments. AWS Cloud WAN connects data centers, branch offices, and cloud resources into a single, centrally managed network that reduces operational cost and complexity while improving network health, performance, and security, so enterprises can remove the need to individually configure and manage multiple networks using different technologies.  
• IBM expanded its relationship with AWS and will offer its software catalog as-a-Service (SaaS) on AWS, providing customers quick and easy access to IBM’s automation, data and AI, security, and sustainability software.  
• AWS was named MongoDB’s 2022 Cloud (Co-Sell) Partner of the Year for jointly winning new deals and helping customers modernize around the world.  
• AWS was named Splunk’s 2022 Global Cloud Partner of the Year and announced a new Customer Immersion Experience Center in Splunk’s London office to demonstrate the benefit that data and digital transformation can have on innovation and cost reduction.  
• AWS announced that it remotely operated an AWS Snowcone, an ultra-portable data transfer and edge computing device, on the International Space Station to process data on orbit for the first time as part of a private Axiom Space mission. The portable data storage and transfer device processed photos from onboard research experiments and optimized the limited bandwidth available between the space station and Earth. The operation showed that it is possible to extend AWS’s cloud computing hardware to space and will allow AWS to better support future customer space missions.  
• AWS and Amazon Ads launched Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) Insights on AWS. The new solution helps advertisers and agencies easily use AWS services when running Amazon Ads campaigns to analyze and generate reporting from the Amazon Marketing Cloud API, reducing their development time from weeks to hours. With a few clicks, AMC users can monitor ongoing ad campaign performance across reach, frequency, geography, audience, and device type to better understand how to maximize ad spend.

Investing in Employees and Our Workplace

• In the first six months of 2022, more than 25,000 employees worldwide joined Amazon’s Career Choice program—taking advantage of benefits such as fully funded college tuition, new industry certifications, courses to improve English language proficiency, and high school completion programs. Since 2012, more than 80,000 employees have participated in Career Choice, one of nine upskilling programs offered by Amazon as part of its $1.2 billion commitment to upskill more than 300,000 Amazon employees by 2025.  
• More than 90 companies, including Cummins, John Deere, The Boeing Company, and United Airlines, have joined Amazon and the National Safety Council (NSC) in a first-of-its kind pledge to reduce musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), the most common workplace injury, by 25% by 2025. The pledge is part of the five-year partnership between Amazon and the NSC to reduce MSDs and improve workplace safety for millions of workers worldwide.  
• Proteus, Amazon’s first fully autonomous mobile robot, uses advanced safety, perception, and navigation technology developed by Amazon to move objects through the company’s operation facilities. Proteus navigates around employees—meaning it does not need to be confined to restricted areas.  
• Cardinal is a robotic workcell that uses advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision to handle lifting and turning of large or heavy packages and complicated packing in a confined space.  
• Amazon Robotics Identification is an AI-powered scanning capability that was developed based on employee feedback. It uses innovative computer vision and machine learning technology to enable easier scanning of packages in facilities.  
• Containerized Storage System is a robotic system that delivers products to employees in a more ergonomically friendly manner, reducing the need for employees to reach up, bend down, or climb ladders when retrieving items.  
• Amazon was named No. 1 on LinkedIn’s Top Companies in Retail, a new list that ranks the industry’s 25 best U.S. companies to grow a career in, based on LinkedIn’s data. LinkedIn highlighted Amazon’s benefits, such as up to 20 weeks of fully paid leave for new and expectant parents, weekly pay, and various apprenticeship and certification opportunities.  
• For the fifth year in a row, Amazon was included on the Disability Equality Index’s Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion.  
• Throughout the month of June, Amazon celebrated “Pride Out Loud” by amplifying the stories and lives of LGBTQIA+ employees, customers, and communities across the business. From operations to entertainment, the company supported more than 95 employee events around the world, sponsored local Pride celebrations in cities across the U.S., and donated to organizations that impact the lives of LGBTQIA+ youth.  
• In celebration of Juneteenth, Amazon launched a comprehensive inclusive learning campaign for Amazon employees worldwide, featuring diversity, equity, and inclusion resources, programs and events, and interactive learning experiences, including a sit-down with Dr. Russell Wigginton, the president of the National Civil Rights Museum.  
• Amazon launched its latest employee learning and development program, Day 1 Manager Onboarding, to accelerate new people-managers’ growth and development. The personalized learning program helps managers strengthen their understanding of Amazon’s culture, support employee career growth, and build high-performing teams through coursework on topics such as how to use leadership principles when making decisions and in common management scenarios.  

Supporting Communities, Selling Partners, and the Economy

• Amazon continues to support individuals and organizations impacted by the war in Ukraine. AWS is helping Ukraine build up cybersecurity defenses and has already migrated 10 petabytes (10 million gigabytes) of essential data to the cloud from 27 Ukrainian ministries, 18 Ukrainian universities, the country’s largest remote learning K–12 school, and dozens of private-sector companies like PrivatBank, which serves 40% of the Ukrainian population and worked with AWS to securely migrate all its operations to the cloud in less than 45 days. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded AWS the Ukraine Peace Prize for preserving the country’s digital infrastructure by migrating state registries and critical databases to AWS. Since the start of the war, Amazon has donated more than 2 million products to over 45 organizations supporting refugees, including 200,000 hygiene kits packed by Amazon employees around the world.
• In partnership with Welcome.US and resettlement agencies across the U.S., Amazon created the Welcome Essentials initiative using Amazon’s logistics expertise and product selection to offer refugee families free delivery of essential products, like furniture and household items, to help more than 1,000 families resettling in more than 40 cities in the U.S. this year. On top of this logistics support, Amazon has committed $2 million in donations of essential products to supporting partners.
• Amazon doubled the capacity of its Humanitarian Relief Hub in Atlanta to 1 million critical relief supplies that are ready to ship to communities in the Gulf Coast, the Caribbean, and Central America that have been affected by natural disasters. The facility has 20,000 cubic feet of storage space dedicated to relief items, and Amazon works with humanitarian partners around the world to deploy essential supplies when a disaster strikes, using Amazon’s global logistics network. Since 2017, Amazon has provided more than 18 million items to support relief partners worldwide during 81 natural disasters.
• With $96 million in cash donations to more than 180 organizations, Amazon was recognized by the  Puget Sound Business Journal  as the top corporate philanthropist in its home state of Washington. These contributions were part of Amazon’s total global donations of more than $360 million last year.
• Amazon was awarded the Defender of Innocence Award by the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. This award recognized Amazon’s legal department for its pro bono work to prevent and correct the conviction of innocent people in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Over the past few years, 120 Amazon lawyers in more than 14 countries have spent hundreds of hours screening, evaluating, and litigating cases for the organization—more time, people, and resources than any other company or law firm.
• Amazon announced additional investments in affordable housing projects in its hometown communities through the Amazon Housing Equity Fund’s $2 billion commitment. The Fund invested more than $30 million to create and preserve 705 affordable homes in Nashville, Tennessee, and in Seattle. The projects are in neighborhoods facing increasing rents and displacement pressures, and five out of the six investments are with local minority-led organizations. Since the launch of the Fund in 2021, Amazon has created or preserved over 8,000 affordable homes, increasing the affordable housing inventory in Bellevue, Washington, and Arlington, Virginia, by at least 20% in one year.
• In India, Amazon raised its pledge to now enable $20 billion in cumulative exports by 2025. Since launching in 2015, Amazon’s Global Selling program has grown to more than 100,000 exporters that are showcasing millions of Made in India products to customers worldwide through Amazon’s store. Indian exporters are on track to surpass $5 billion in cumulative exports. In Italy, Amazon announced a new pledge to help the more than 18,000 small and medium-sized businesses selling on Amazon reach €1.2 billion in annual export sales by 2025. This pledge will support the objectives of the Italian government’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan while ensuring a wider availability of original Italian products to customers worldwide.
• In India, Amazon launched Smart Commerce, a new initiative to further digitize local retail stores by enabling them to create customized online storefronts and provide an enhanced in-store shopping experience. Stores of any size will now take advantage of Amazon’s shopping innovations, logistics, and digital payments to provide a reliable and trustworthy experience for customers in store, directly through their dedicated online storefronts or on Amazon.in. There are more than 150,000 local stores already selling on Amazon.in, and Amazon is committed to digitizing 10 million small businesses, including local stores, by 2025.
• AWS announced that it selected 34 startups to receive funding and guidance across three accelerators in Sustainable Cities, Space, and Clean Energy. Each startup is eligible to receive technical guidance, business development and strategy support, collaboration opportunities with AWS customers and members of the AWS Partner Network, and up to $100,000 in AWS promotional credits.

Protecting the Planet

• In the U.S., Amazon started making customer deliveries with its custom Rivian electric delivery vehicles (EDVs). This rollout is the start of what Amazon plans to be thousands of EDVs in more than 100 cities by the end of 2022—and 100,000 EDVs across the U.S. by 2030. In India, Amazon signed an agreement with Tata Motors to include the new Tata Ace electric vehicle as part of Amazon’s delivery fleet. The new EDV was co-developed with Amazon and will contribute to the company’s goal of having 10,000 EDVs on the road in India by 2025. In the UK, Amazon announced the launch of its first micromobility hub for more sustainable deliveries in central London. E-cargo bikes and walkers from the new hub, along with Amazon’s electric fleet already on London’s roads, will make over 5 million deliveries a year across more than 10% of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone.
• Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund made new investments in Electric Hydrogen and Sunfire, two developers of electrolyzer technologies. Electrolyzer technology makes green hydrogen using water and renewable electricity. The Fund has announced investments in 18 companies to date as part of its mission to invest in visionary companies whose products and solutions will facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
• The Climate Pledge announced a collaboration with the National Geographic Society to fund 15 National Geographic Explorers as they document the global climate crisis as part of the Society’s Global Storytellers Fund. The collaboration will advance early career and established storytellers—including photographers, writers, and filmmakers—with the funding, training, and exposure necessary to help inspire global audiences and drive urgent action against the climate crisis.  

Financial Guidance

The following forward-looking statements reflect Amazon.com’s expectations as of July 28, 2022, and are subject to substantial uncertainty. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, such as uncertainty regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and customer demand and spending, inflation, regional labor market and global supply chain constraints, world events, the rate of growth of the Internet, online commerce, and cloud services, and the various factors detailed below. This guidance reflects our estimates as of July 28, 2022 regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operations as well as the effect of other factors discussed above.

Third Quarter 2022 Guidance

• Net sales are expected to be between $125.0 billion and $130.0 billion, or to grow between 13% and 17% compared with third quarter 2021. This guidance anticipates an unfavorable impact of approximately 390 basis points from foreign exchange rates.
• Operating income is expected to be between $0 and $3.5 billion, compared with $4.9 billion in third quarter 2021.
• This guidance assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded.

A conference call will be webcast live today at 2:30 p.m. PT/5:30 p.m. ET, and will be available for at least three months at  amazon.com/ir . This call will contain forward-looking statements and other material information regarding the Company’s financial and operating results.

These forward-looking statements are inherently difficult to predict. Actual results and outcomes could differ materially for a variety of reasons, including, in addition to the factors discussed above, the amount that  Amazon.com  invests in new business opportunities and the timing of those investments, the mix of products and services sold to customers, the mix of net sales derived from products as compared with services, the extent to which we owe income or other taxes, competition, management of growth, potential fluctuations in operating results, international growth and expansion, the outcomes of claims, litigation, government investigations, and other proceedings, fulfillment, sortation, delivery, and data center optimization, risks of inventory management, variability in demand, the degree to which the Company enters into, maintains, and develops commercial agreements, proposed and completed acquisitions and strategic transactions, payments risks, and risks of fulfillment throughput and productivity. Other risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to new products, services, and technologies, system interruptions, government regulation and taxation, and fraud. In addition, global economic conditions and additional or unforeseen effects from the COVID-19 pandemic amplify many of these risks. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Our investor relations website is  amazon.com/ir  and we encourage investors to use it as a way of easily finding information about us. We promptly make available on this website, free of charge, the reports that we file or furnish with the SEC, corporate governance information (including our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics), and select press releases, which may contain material information about us, and you may subscribe to be notified of new information posted to this site.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit  amazon.com/about  and follow @AmazonNews.

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Amazon.com, Inc. Certain Definitions

Customer Accounts

• References to customers mean customer accounts established when a customer places an order through one of our stores. Customer accounts exclude certain customers, including customers associated with certain of our acquisitions, Amazon Payments customers, AWS customers, and the customers of select companies with whom we have a technology alliance or marketing and promotional relationship. Customers are considered active when they have placed an order during the preceding twelve-month period.

Seller Accounts

• References to sellers means seller accounts, which are established when a seller receives an order from a customer account. Sellers are considered active when they have received an order from a customer during the preceding twelve-month period.

AWS Customers

• References to AWS customers mean unique AWS customer accounts, which are unique customer account IDs that are eligible to use AWS services. This includes AWS accounts in the AWS free tier. Multiple users accessing AWS services via one account ID are counted as a single account. Customers are considered active when they have had AWS usage activity during the preceding one-month period.
• References to units mean physical and digital units sold (net of returns and cancellations) by us and sellers in our stores as well as Amazon-owned items sold in other stores. Units sold are paid units and do not include units associated with AWS, certain acquisitions, certain subscriptions, rental businesses, or advertising businesses, or Amazon gift cards.

View source version on  businesswire.com :  https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220727006066/en/

Amazon Investor Relations Dave Fildes,  [email protected] amazon.com/ir

Amazon Public Relations Dan Perlet,  [email protected] amazon.com/pr

Source: Amazon.com, Inc.

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What You Need To Know Ahead of Amazon's Earnings Report Tuesday

MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP via Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Amazon reports first-quarter results after the bell Tuesday, with analysts expecting jumps in net sales and profit.
• CEO Andy Jassy published his annual letter to shareholders earlier this month, expressing his excitement about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and outlining where Amazon's different divisions could see growth in 2024.
• Investors and analysts will be watching for updates on the rollout of ads on Prime Video, as well as insights into Amazon's AI plans.

Amazon ( AMZN ) is set to report first-quarter earnings after markets close Tuesday, days after announcing a new grocery delivery subscription service and expansions to its artificial intelligence (AI ) tools.

Analysts expect Amazon will significantly increase its revenue and profit year-over-year, with net income projected to rise to $8.98 billion, or 84 cents per share, more than double the $3.17 billion and 31 cents per share it reported in the first quarter of 2023, according to consensus estimated compiled by Visible Alpha. Total net sales of $142.59 billion are predicted, up from $127.36 billion a year ago.

The e-commerce and web hosting giant announced a pair of initiatives a week before the earnings report, a grocery delivery subscription service and new tools in its Amazon Bedrock product, which offers building blocks for customers to make personalized AI tools.

Bank of America Securities analysts wrote in a recent note that the subscription service could compete with Instacart for new customers in the grocery delivery space, as well as similar offerings from programs like Walmart+ and Target Circle .

Key Metric: Advertising Revenue

One metric analysts have noted as a potential point of substantial growth for Tuesday's report is Amazon's advertising business, which could post billions of dollars in additional revenue over time as the company continues the rollout of ads on Prime Video that it started earlier this year .

Wedbush Securities analysts wrote in a Tuesday note that ads on Prime Video could generate about "$6.5B of incremental revenue" once it is fully in place across the world. They also wrote that in a recent survey, about 56% of respondents said they increased their ad spend on Amazon by at least 10% year-over-year in the first quarter, with a quarter saying they increased spend by more than 20%.

Nearly all the advertisers surveyed told Wedbush they planned to increase their budget for Amazon ads at some point this year, leading the analysts to project Amazon's advertising revenue to grow 24.5% from the first quarter of 2023, and 23% by the end of the full fiscal year.

Amazon Chief Executive Officer (CEO ) Andy Jassy said in his shareholder letter earlier this month that he has confidence that Prime Video can grow into a large and profitable business on its own, saying streaming advertising was "growing quickly and off to a strong start."

Business Spotlight: Continued Rise of AI

Jassy and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon spent a significant portion of their annual letters to investors expressing their excitement about the future of AI and the impact it could have on their businesses. AI is also a central theme for quarterly reports this week, with earnings from Meta Platforms ( META ), Google parent Alphabet ( GOOGL ), and Microsoft ( MSFT ).

Jassy wrote that he thinks AI could be the "largest technology transformation since the cloud (which itself, is still in the early stages), and perhaps since the Internet."

Jassy said in the shareholder letter that the AI boom across the market could benefit his company in a number of ways, from increased demand for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Amazon's Bedrock AI-platform building tool, as well as Amazon Q, its AI-powered coding assistant. Amazon has said previously that there are "tens of thousands" of customers using Bedrock currently, including Delta Air Lines ( DAL ), Intuit ( INTU ), and Pfizer ( PFE ).

Wedbush analysts said that they project AWS to be "a primary beneficiary of generative AI and the company is well positioned with solutions for all layers of the genAI stack."

Amazon shares have gained 62% in the last 12 months amid a larger boom in AI-related tech stocks . However, Thursday afternoon Amazon, in line with other Big Tech decliners related to earnings news, was off 2% at $172.91 at 1:40 p.m. ET.

Amazon. " Amazon.com To Webcast First-Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call ."

Amazon. " Amazon.com Announces First-Quarter Results ."

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