amazon web services, inc.

overview

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud computing platform, offering over 200 fully-featured services from data centers globally. Launched in 2006 with S3 and EC2, AWS pioneered the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model and remains the global market leader with 30% market share. As a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., AWS provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.

business model

AWS operates a consumption-based business model where customers pay only for the cloud services they use, without upfront costs or long-term commitments. Revenue streams include compute (EC2, Lambda), storage (S3, EBS), databases (RDS, DynamoDB), networking, analytics, machine learning, and over 200 other services. AWS serves enterprises, startups, government agencies, and individual developers through a global infrastructure of regions, availability zones, and edge locations. The company also generates revenue from Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and enterprise support agreements. AWS’s scale advantages enable continuous price reductions while maintaining industry-leading margins.

data center profile

global footprint

us portfolio (from database)

projects by state

specialization

primary focus: hyperscale, cloud, ai-ml

key differentiators:

• Market leader with 30% global cloud infrastructure market share

• Most comprehensive service portfolio with 200+ services

• Largest global infrastructure footprint - 38 regions, 120 availability zones

• Pioneered IaaS model with S3 (2006) and EC2 (2006)

• Custom silicon advantage: Graviton CPUs, Trainium/Inferentia AI chips offering 40-50% better price-performance vs Nvidia

financial highlights

strategy

corporate strategy

AWS’s corporate strategy focuses on maintaining market leadership in cloud infrastructure through continuous innovation, global expansion, and operational excellence. The company invests heavily in custom silicon (Graviton, Trainium, Inferentia) to reduce dependency on third-party chipmakers and deliver superior price-performance to customers. AWS prioritizes AI infrastructure buildout to capture generative AI workload growth, evidenced by Amazon’s $100 billion 2025 capex commitment (majority for AWS). The strategy emphasizes sustainability through renewable energy procurement, water efficiency, and carbon-free operations by 2040. AWS leverages its early-mover advantage and scale to continuously reduce prices while maintaining industry-leading margins, creating a virtuous cycle of market share gains and reinvestment. The company maintains strong customer lock-in through deep service integration, enterprise relationships, and compliance certifications across regulated industries.

growth strategy

AWS’s growth strategy centers on aggressive capacity expansion driven by AI workload demand, with Amazon investing $100 billion in 2025 capex (up from$83 billion in 2024), with the majority allocated to AWS data center infrastructure. Geographic expansion includes new regions in Mexico (2025), Saudi Arabia (2026), Thailand, New Zealand, Chile, and AWS European Sovereign Cloud (Q4 2025), backed by €7.8 billion investment. In the US, AWS focuses on securing large-scale power availability through nuclear partnerships (Talen Energy 1.92GW at Susquehanna, X-energy 5GW SMR commitment) and strategic site selection in power-rich areas (Pennsylvania $20B, Ohio$23B, Virginia $35B). The company expands its AI capabilities through custom silicon development (Trainium3 launching late 2025), foundation model offerings (Amazon Nova series), and partnerships with NVIDIA for latest GPUs. Edge computing expansion through Local Zones, Wavelength 5G zones, and CloudFront enables low-latency applications. AWS grows revenue through service expansion (200+ services with 3,000+ new features annually), customer segment penetration (government, healthcare, financial services), and ecosystem development through AWS Marketplace and partner network.

power strategy

AWS pursues a multi-pronged power strategy combining direct nuclear agreements, utility partnerships, renewable energy procurement, and innovative on-site generation to secure sufficient capacity for AI-driven growth. The company prioritizes reliability and carbon-free energy while maintaining cost competitiveness.

renewable commitment: AWS achieved 100% renewable energy matching for all electricity consumed in 2023 and 2024, seven years ahead of the original 2030 goal. Amazon is the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy since 2020, with over 400 renewable energy projects globally including 170 solar and 60 wind farms generating 50,000+ GWh annually. Regional commitments include 52 European projects (2.5 GW capacity, total 9 GW in Europe), 1.3 GW clean energy in India (largest corporate purchaser), and strategic partnerships with EDP Renewables, Duke Energy, and other utilities. AWS targets 100% renewable energy by 2025 and net-zero carbon by 2040 through The Climate Pledge. The company achieves industry-leading PUE of 1.15 globally (best site: 1.04 in Europe) and water usage effectiveness of 0.25 liters per kWh, with commitment to be water positive by 2030 (currently 53% of the way).

nuclear partnerships:

• Talen Energy - 17-year PPA for 1.92GW from Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, with 960MW available for direct data center connection. $650 million acquisition of nuclear-powered data center campus from Talen. Full 1.92GW volume expected by 2032. Additional exploration of new SMR construction and Susquehanna uprates within Talen’s Pennsylvania footprint.

• X-energy - Direct investment led by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund in $500 million funding round. Partnership to develop more than 5GW of new nuclear power projects by 2039 using X-energy’s advanced SMR technology and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel. Initial projects include 300MW in Pacific Northwest and Virginia.

• Energy Northwest - Partnership to develop small modular reactors in Washington state using X-energy technology, providing carbon-free baseload power for AWS data centers in US-West region.

• Dominion Energy - Strategic collaboration for power availability in Virginia, AWS’s largest market, exploring nuclear and grid solutions to support data center growth.

major commitments

partnerships

power providers

technology partners

NVIDIA (AI Hardware / GPUs) : Strategic partnership for latest GPU technology including H100, H200, and upcoming Blackwell GPUs in P6 instances (early 2025). NVIDIA engineers access GH200 Supercomputer on AWS for model development and chip design. AWS offers DGX Cloud services. Despite AWS custom silicon development (Trainium/Inferentia), NVIDIA remains key partner with phenomenal fleet growth expected.

Intel (Server CPUs) : Long-standing processor supplier for EC2 instances. AWS positions Intel CPUs at 30-40% price/performance premium versus custom Graviton Arm processors, creating incentive for customers to adopt AWS silicon while maintaining Intel availability for workload compatibility.

AMD (Server CPUs / GPUs) : CPU and GPU supplier for EC2 instances. AMD processors offered alongside Intel with pricing incentives favoring AWS Graviton. AMD GPUs provide alternative to NVIDIA for cost-sensitive AI workloads.

Annapurna Labs (AWS subsidiary) (Custom Silicon) : Israeli chip design subsidiary (acquired 2015) that developed AWS’s custom silicon portfolio: Nitro DPUs for network/storage offload, Graviton ARM CPUs (up to Graviton4), Trainium AI training chips (Trainium2 GA, Trainium3 late 2025), and Inferentia AI inference chips (up to Inferentia2). Apple uses Trainium for AI model training.

Arm Holdings (CPU Architecture) : ARM architecture licensing for AWS Graviton processors. Graviton instances serve 50,000+ customers with 35% price-performance improvement versus x86 for many workloads. Partnership enables AWS competitive differentiation and margin advantages.

financial partnerships

leadership

Andy Jassy

President and Chief Executive Officer, Amazon.com, Inc.

Joined Amazon in 1997 as marketing manager. Co-created AWS concept with Jeff Bezos in 2003. Led AWS from founding through explosive growth, establishing cloud computing industry. Promoted to Amazon CEO effective July 5, 2021. Under his leadership, Amazon capex focused on AWS AI infrastructure reached $100B for 2025.

AWS founding father and architect of the cloud computing revolution. Responsible for Amazon’s strategic pivot toward massive AWS infrastructure investment ($100B 2025 capex). Sets overall direction for AWS as Amazon’s primary profit engine and growth driver.

Matt Garman

Chief Executive Officer, Amazon Web Services

Started at Amazon as MBA intern (summer 2005), joined full-time in 2006 as one of first AWS product managers. Helped launch initial AWS services including S3 and EC2. Led AWS Sales, Marketing, Support, and Professional Services starting in 2020. Became AWS CEO effective June 3, 2024, succeeding Adam Selipsky.

Rose from intern to AWS CEO over 19 years, demonstrating deep institutional knowledge. Responsible for AWS’s response to AI revolution and competition with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Oversees majority of Amazon’s $100B 2025 capex allocation. Leading AWS through critical period of AI infrastructure expansion and nuclear power partnerships.

Peter DeSantis

Senior Vice President, AWS Utility Computing

Long-time AWS employee who joined in 2005. Deep technical expertise in distributed systems and infrastructure. Frequent presenter at AWS re:Invent on infrastructure innovations and custom silicon.

Technical leader for AWS foundational infrastructure services that generate majority of revenue. Oversees data center architecture, custom silicon development, and infrastructure innovation. Critical role in AWS cost structure optimization and service reliability.

competitive position

AWS is the undisputed global cloud infrastructure market leader with 30% market share (Q2 2025), significantly ahead of Microsoft Azure (20%) and Google Cloud (13%). AWS pioneered the IaaS model with S3 and EC2 launches in 2006, establishing first-mover advantage and market definition leadership. The company maintains the broadest service portfolio (200+ services with 3,000+ annual feature releases) and largest global infrastructure footprint (38 regions, 120 availability zones). AWS generated $107.6 billion revenue in 2024 (19$39.8 billion operating income, representing roughly 60% of Amazon’s total operating profit despite being only 17% of revenue. AWS serves 90%+ of Fortune 100 companies, 7,500+ US government agencies, and millions of customers globally. The company’s early dominance in enterprise workloads creates significant switching costs and lock-in through deep service integration, data gravity, and compliance certifications. AWS invests heavily in AI infrastructure to maintain leadership, with Amazon allocating majority of $100 billion 2025 capex to AWS data centers and AI computing capacity. Strategic nuclear power partnerships (Talen Energy 1.92GW, X-energy 5GW) and custom silicon advantages (Graviton, Trainium, Inferentia) differentiate AWS from competitors and improve margins.

strengths

• Market leadership with 30% global cloud infrastructure share - 50% larger than Azure, 2.3x larger than Google Cloud

• First-mover advantage - pioneered IaaS model in 2006 with S3 and EC2, defining the cloud computing category

• Broadest service portfolio - 200+ fully-featured services vs. competitors’ smaller catalogs

• Largest global infrastructure footprint - 38 regions, 120 availability zones, most extensive edge network

• Strongest financial performance - $107.6B revenue (19$39.8B operating income, generates 60% of Amazon’s operating profit

opportunities

• AI workload explosion - generative AI driving massive demand for GPU compute, inference, and training infrastructure

• Enterprise cloud migration acceleration - COVID-19 normalized cloud adoption, many enterprises still early in migration journey

• Nuclear-powered data centers - Talen and X-energy partnerships create unique sustainable power advantage competitors lack

• Custom silicon expansion - Trainium3, Graviton5, and future chips increase margin advantages and reduce NVIDIA dependency

• Edge computing growth - Local Zones, Wavelength 5G partnerships, IoT expansion drive new revenue streams

threats

• Microsoft Azure competitive pressure - Azure growing enterprise share through Office 365 bundling and enterprise licensing advantages

• Google Cloud AI leadership - GCP’s superior AI/ML tools and BigQuery analytics threaten AWS in data-intensive workloads

• Multi-cloud adoption - enterprises pursuing multi-cloud strategies reduce AWS lock-in and increase competition for incremental workloads

• Oracle Cloud competitive targeting - Oracle aggressively targets database workload migration with price and performance claims

• Antitrust and regulatory scrutiny - AWS market dominance attracts regulatory attention, potential forced interoperability or breakup

projects

Showing top 20 of 24 projects

sources

• Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2024

• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (2025-01-31)

• Amazon.com, Inc. Investor Relations

• Amazon.com, Inc.

• AWS Global Infrastructure - Regions and Availability Zones

• Amazon Web Services

• Amazon plans to invest $20 billion in Pennsylvania

• Amazon (2025-06-09)

• AWS plans $10 billion infrastructure investment in Ohio

• Amazon (2024-06-01)

• Learn about AWS’s long-term commitment to Virginia

• Amazon

• Talen Energy Expands Nuclear Energy Relationship with Amazon

• Talen Energy (2025-06-11)

• AWS, Talen sign PPA for 1.92GW of power from Pennsylvania nuclear plant

• Data Center Dynamics (2024-03-01)

• Amazon Eyes Nuclear Energy Future with Two New SMR Project Partnerships

• Nasdaq (2024-10-01)

• Amazon Invests $500m in Nuclear Energy for Clean AI by 2040

• Energy Magazine (2024-10-01)