Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares jumped approximately 13% on Friday after stronger-than-expected growth at its cloud computing division reinforced investor confidence in the company's artificial intelligence investments.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company's cloud business and its largest profit driver, posted its fastest revenue growth in more than four years. The acceleration in AWS revenue signaled robust demand for cloud infrastructure, particularly as enterprises increasingly adopt AI-powered services that require substantial computing resources. AWS has long held the largest share of the global cloud infrastructure market, ahead of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, making its growth trajectory a closely watched barometer for enterprise technology spending.

The upbeat results and management's positive outlook helped ease investor concerns that had been building over the scale of capital spending on artificial intelligence across major technology companies. Big Tech firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta have committed tens of billions of dollars to AI infrastructure, including data centers, specialized chips, and energy resources, prompting Wall Street scrutiny over whether these investments would translate into meaningful returns. Through much of 2024, investors had pressed tech executives for evidence that AI capital expenditures were generating proportional revenue, making AWS's acceleration a key data point in that broader debate.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has repeatedly emphasized that AWS is positioned to be a primary beneficiary of the AI transition, as businesses migrate workloads to the cloud and adopt generative AI tools. The latest AWS growth figures lent support to that thesis.

The share surge placed Amazon among the top performers in the S&P 500 and underscored renewed market optimism that large-scale AI spending by technology giants is beginning to yield tangible revenue growth.