Amazon sees cloud slowdown in April, shares erase gains

Amazon.com’s CFO Brian Olsavsky has told analysts that customers using its cloud services kept trying to slim down their bills during Q2 2021, meaning the company was helping them to do so to build long-term relationships. Consequently, revenue growth rates were about 5% points lower in April than in the first quarter. The news saw the entire gain in the stock rise vanish in just minutes of after-hours trading. The company’s surprise gain and subsequent fall illustrates a potentially precarious moment for the firm, which is facing a nascent threat from Microsoft and Google, which are rolling out high-profile artificial intelligence tools.