Amazon is on a historic spending spree, earmarking $200bn for capital expenditure this year, mostly to support its cloud-computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), in the race to build artificial-intelligence infrastructure.
The company's investment in OpenAI, worth up to $50bn, is almost quadruple what Microsoft has committed to the maker of ChatGPT since 2019.
Despite powerful competitive forces, Amazon is determined to regain its stride in the cloud market, which has seen its main rivals, Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud, grow faster since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022.
Amazon has a history of swinging for the fences, and its current capex binge may pay off as companies beyond Silicon Valley start to embrace AI more fully.
With its sheer breadth of customers and burgeoning relationship with OpenAI, AWS is well-positioned to benefit from the growing demand for cloud services.
Working with both OpenAI and Anthropic will position Amazon well for the moment when AI agents lead to a surge in enterprise spending.
