Amazon reported strong financial results for its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), with third-quarter revenue reaching $33 billion—marking a 20% year-over-year increase. This performance surpassed analysts’ expectations, which had forecast revenue of $32.42 billion, or a 18.1% growth rate, according to data from StreetAccount. Operating income for AWS rose 9% to $11.4 billion, also exceeding forecasts and contributing roughly two-thirds of Amazon’s total operating profit. AWS remains the world’s largest cloud infrastructure provider, but it faces mounting competition from Microsoft and Google, both of which reported robust cloud growth this week. Google’s cloud revenue surged 34% in the quarter, while Microsoft Azure achieved a 40% increase. The results come shortly after AWS experienced a prolonged outage lasting over 15 hours, disrupting numerous websites and services. The incident raised concerns about reliability, especially as Microsoft also faced outages in its Azure cloud and Microsoft 365 services just hours before its own earnings announcement. Despite these challenges, Amazon made a major strategic move by officially launching Project Rainier, its $11 billion AI data center in Indiana. First announced last year, the facility is designed to train and run large AI models developed by Anthropic, the creator of the Claude series of AI assistants. Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic and expects the company to utilize 1 million of its custom Trainium2 chips by the end of 2025. The launch of Project Rainier underscores Amazon’s efforts to strengthen its position in the rapidly expanding AI cloud market. With major AI partnerships forming elsewhere—such as Anthropic’s recent deal with Google and Meta’s cloud agreements with Google and Oracle—Amazon is aiming to counter perceptions that it is lagging behind in securing high-value AI infrastructure contracts.