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By Deborah Mary Sophia

Feb 5 (Reuters) - The pressure is on Amazon.com to deliver on lofty expectations for cloud computing in its fourth-quarter outcomes on Thursday, after Microsoft and Google's lackluster reports jolted investor faith in Big Tech's billion-dollar investments in AI.

Shares of major tech business rose in the past 2 years on the belief that huge datacenter requires for artificial-intelligence innovations would power financial investment for years.

But that was before Chinese startup DeepSeek said it had attained AI advancements at a fraction of the expense, precipitating a selloff in technology stocks that some say was past due.

Still, Amazon might be much better positioned than rivals to capitalize on more affordable AI, bio.rogstecnologia.com.br experts say, due to its huge cloud business and lower direct exposure to pricey large-language models that power apps like ChatGPT.

Amazon Web Services, the world's largest cloud services company, is anticipated to publish its greatest revenue increase in eight quarters at 19.3%, according to data compiled by LSEG.

But Microsoft and Meta were both required to safeguard their AI costs plans last week, and shares of Google-parent Alphabet plunged 8% on Wednesday after it said it would be spending more on capex than experts expected.

"Microsoft and Google outcomes have put even more of a microscope on Amazon's cloud development," said Dave Wagner, portfolio supervisor at Aptus Capital Advisors, which holds shares in all 3 technology business.

"But if Amazon can crush it on their cloud numbers, the marketplace's going to definitely like that report."

The company was the very first huge cloud service provider to accept DeepSeek's AI designs last month and has said its capital costs, mainly on AI, would be more than the $75 billion it estimated for 2024.

Slowing development at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, wiki.snooze-hotelsoftware.de the second- and third-biggest cloud players, has actually sparked some caution from analysts about AWS' performance.

"Microsoft said it was capacity constrained, Google said it was capacity constrained. More than likely, Amazon is going to state it might have been capability constrained as well and that's why its growth rate isn't rather as much as what the marketplace may have expected," said Bob O'Donnell, chief expert at TECHnalysis Research.

Some see the weak point at rivals as a sign that Amazon might have captured up in the AI race through efforts including doubling its financial investment in Anthropic and offering a large choice of AI models on its cloud platform.

"We really believe that AWS is regaining share. It had actually been growing a lot slower than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for an amount of time, however we believe that as Amazon has actually caught up on its AI offering, it might have less of a deceleration than Azure and Google Cloud," D.A. Davidson expert Gil Luria said.

The business has actually maintained a greater appraisal than a few of its competitors, with a present forward price-to-earnings ratio of nearly 39. Microsoft's forward P/E is 29 and Alphabet's 22.4, according to LSEG information.

RETAIL STRENGTH

The e-commerce giant's results are also likely to gain from a healthy holiday shopping season, fakenews.win after rival retailers such as Target and gratisafhalen.be a variety of garments companies released rosy projections over the previous month.

Amazon's North American sales for the fourth quarter are predicted to rise 9% year-on-year. After a downturn in online sales development earlier this year, experts say Amazon is primed for a rebound in the retail organization, which has influenced its post-earnings share motions over the previous 2 quarters.

Data from Adobe Analytics revealed U.S. shoppers spent lavishly online in between November and December 2024, investing more than $240 billion, niaskywalk.com drawn by deep discounts on whatever from TVs to toys.

The vacation spending development rate of 8.7% nearly doubled from the 4.9% tape-recorded in 2023, the data showed.

Amazon has actually likewise tried to enhance delivery times and broadened product merchandise, wiki-tb-service.com including its focus on grocery, drug store and fashion - relocations experts say will assist move growth.

"Most signs are that it was an excellent quarter. There was an excellent holiday season for the customer and so there's lots of factor to believe Amazon will have done well in that side of the business," Luria said.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)