Amazon pushes past $2trn valuation for first time

2 days ago

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The company has been pumping billions into generative AI to enhance its business, particularly in cloud.

Amazon has crossed the $2trn valuation threshold for the first time in its history as the tech giant benefits from a surge in demand for cloud and generative AI services.

Shares rose by 3.9pc at market close yesterday (26 June) pushing it past the $2trn mark. Amazon now joins Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia and Alphabet, currently the only other companies with valuations of more than $2trn.

This comes less than two months after Amazon – which recently announced the launch of an Irish storeposted strong financial results in its latest quarterly earnings report with net sales up 13pc and operating income from its cloud services nearly doubled.

Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon, said last month that the earnings marked a “good start to the year” across its major business segments: retail, cloud and advertising.

“The combination of companies renewing their infrastructure modernisation efforts and the appeal of AWS’s AI capabilities is reaccelerating AWS’s growth rate, now at a $100bn annual revenue run rate,” he said.

Amazon has been pumping billions into generative AI to enhance its business, particularly in cloud. In March, it invested $2.75bn into Anthropic (which recently opened its first EU office in Dublin) to complete a $4bn investment commitment it made last year.

It has since committed billions in investment to countries such as Singapore, France and Germany to meet growing cloud infrastructure and AI demand. Amazon has also committed to supports for early-stage start-ups through its generative AI accelerator.

Earlier this month, Amazon was slammed with a billion-pound lawsuit in what became one of the biggest cases of collective action taken by UK retailers for alleged misuse of their data. Days later, it was ordered to pay nearly $122m after a US court found the e-commerce giant guilty of patent violations against AlmondNet, an adtech company based in New York.

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Vish Gain is a journalist with Silicon Republic

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