Amazon topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, as strong sales over the holiday shopping season boosted its retail business, helping offset weakness in the cloud computing unit.
The company's cloud unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), reported a 19 per cent rise in revenue to US$28.79 billion, falling short of estimates of US$28.87 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Amazon joins smaller cloud providers Microsoft and Google in reporting weak cloud numbers.
The cloud weakness comes at a time when investors have grown increasingly impatient with Big Tech's multibillion-dollar capital spending and are hungry for returns from the hefty AI investments.
Still, Amazon's retail business helped offset the cloud weakness, with the company reporting online sales growth of 7 per cent in the quarter to US$75.56 billion.
That number compares to estimates of US$74.55 billion.
The company reported revenue of US$187.8 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with the average analyst estimate of US$187.30 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.