Amazon’s cloud business is surging — and so is its capital spending
Amazon’s cloud business is surging — and so is its capital spending
亚马逊云业务激增，资本支出也随之水涨船高
Amazon was one of several tech giants that on Wednesday beat Wall Street’s first-quarter earnings expectations, offering more financial evidence that the AI boom continues to reward companies that supply the picks and shovels. Amazon’s cloud business is the latest example. 亚马逊是周三超过华尔街第一季度盈利预期的几家科技巨头之一，这提供了更多的财务证据，表明人工智能热潮继续奖励那些提供“铲子和镐”的基础设施供应商。亚马逊的云业务就是最新的例证。
Amazon Web Services, buoyed by its role in fueling the AI boom, saw its net sales increase 28% year-over-year, climbing to $37.6 billion, the company said Wednesday. It was the fastest growth rate for AWS in 15 quarters, Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s earnings call. 亚马逊周三表示，得益于在推动人工智能热潮中的作用，亚马逊云科技（AWS）的净销售额同比增长 28%，攀升至 376 亿美元。亚马逊总裁兼首席执行官安迪·贾西（Andy Jassy）在财报电话会议上表示，这是 AWS 过去 15 个季度以来的最快增长率。
Jassy attributed AWS’ success to its role in providing compute to the AI industry. “It’s very unusual for business to grow this fast on a base this large. The last time we saw growth at this clip, AWS was roughly half the size,” Jassy said. “We’ve never seen a technology grow as rapidly as AI. Amazon is already a leader, and companies continue to choose AWS for AI.” 贾西将 AWS 的成功归功于其为人工智能行业提供计算能力的角色。贾西说：“在如此庞大的基数上实现如此快速的增长是非常罕见的。我们上一次看到这种速度的增长时，AWS 的规模大约只有现在的一半。我们从未见过一种技术像人工智能这样快速增长。亚马逊已经是行业领导者，企业也持续选择 AWS 来进行人工智能开发。”
Jassy compared the business unit’s growth to the aughts. “To put our growth in perspective, three years after AWS launched, it had a $58 million revenue run rate. [During] the first three years of this AI wave, AWS’s AI revenue run rate is over $15 billion — nearly 260 times larger.” 贾西将该业务部门的增长与 21 世纪初进行了比较。“为了说明我们的增长，AWS 推出三年后，其年化收入运行率为 5800 万美元。而在本轮人工智能浪潮的前三年里，AWS 的人工智能年化收入运行率已超过 150 亿美元——几乎是当年的 260 倍。”
Even as money flows into its cloud business, Amazon is also sinking increasingly large gobs of capital into building out the infrastructure that supports that cloud. Jassy said on Wednesday that capital expenditure growth would continue in the near term. “The faster AWS grows, the more short-term capex we’ll spend,” he said. “AWS has to lay out cash for land, power, buildings, chips, servers, and networking gear, in advance of when we can monetize it.” 尽管资金源源不断地流入其云业务，但亚马逊也在投入越来越多的资本，用于构建支持该云业务的基础设施。贾西周三表示，短期内资本支出将继续增长。他说：“AWS 增长得越快，我们投入的短期资本支出就越多。AWS 必须在能够实现盈利之前，提前为土地、电力、建筑、芯片、服务器和网络设备投入现金。”
Jassy positioned these investments as short-term cash burn for a long-term payoff, noting that these capital expenditures fund assets like data centers that last more than 30 years or chips, servers, and networking gear that have a useful life for five to six years. 贾西将这些投资定位为以短期现金消耗换取长期回报，并指出这些资本支出用于资助数据中心等资产（使用寿命超过 30 年），或使用寿命为 5 到 6 年的芯片、服务器和网络设备。
Jassy did attempt to quell investor fears that the e-commerce giant was spending too much on infrastructure. He also provided more than a hint at how that kind of spending would affect free cash flow. “In times of very high growth like now — where the capex growth meaningfully outpaces the revenue growth — the early years, free cash flow is challenged,” he said. 贾西试图平息投资者对这家电子商务巨头在基础设施上投入过多的担忧。他还暗示了这种支出将如何影响自由现金流。他说：“在像现在这样高速增长的时期——资本支出增长明显超过收入增长——在早期阶段，自由现金流会面临挑战。”
Amazon’s first-quarter earnings report reflects the pull on free cash flow. The company reported that free cash flow decreased to $1.2 billion for the trailing twelve months, driven primarily by a year-over-year increase of $59.3 billion in purchases of property and equipment — much of its related to AI. That’s a 95% drop from the $25.9 billion in free cash flow it had in the first quarter of 2025. 亚马逊的第一季度财报反映了对自由现金流的压力。该公司报告称，过去十二个月的自由现金流降至 12 亿美元，这主要是由于物业和设备采购额同比增加了 593 亿美元——其中大部分与人工智能有关。这比 2025 年第一季度 259 亿美元的自由现金流下降了 95%。
“We’ve been through this cycle with the first big AWS growth wave, and like the results. We expect to feel similarly about this next wave with much larger potential downstream revenue and free cash flow,” he added. 他补充道：“我们已经经历过 AWS 第一波大增长周期的考验，并且喜欢当时的结果。我们预计在这一波浪潮中也会有类似的感受，因为其下游收入和自由现金流的潜力要大得多。”
The e-commerce giant’s overall sales, meanwhile, rose 17% to $181.5 billion on a year-over-year basis. Sales grew 12% in North America and 19% throughout the rest of the world, the company reported. 与此同时，这家电子商务巨头的总销售额同比增长 17%，达到 1815 亿美元。公司报告称，北美地区销售额增长了 12%，世界其他地区增长了 19%。