Amazon stock soars as AI and retail strength power revenue growth

Amazon.com shares surged 7% before the bell on Friday after the e-commerce heavyweight reported higher-than-expected holiday quarter sales and its lucrative cloud business signaled early gains from AI-powered features.

The company joined Microsoft and other tech firms in starting to see results benefiting from their heavy AI investments, while also outlining more spending in 2024 to develop the much-hyped tech.

“AWS (Amazon Web Services) is also seeing a strong ramp in early Gen AI revenue, though still a small contribution on a about $100 billion run-rate business. We believe AWS will gain meaningful traction in Gen AI over the coming year,” J.P.Morgan’s Doug Anmuth said.