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AWS sees record growth driven by AI demand as capacity sells out through 2028

August 3, 2026 12:25 PM

Investing.com -- Amazon Web Services (AWS) is recording its fastest growth rate in nearly five years, powered by a massive surge in artificial intelligence workloads across both frontier research labs and traditional enterprise sectors, AWS CEO Matt Garman revealed in an interview on Bloomberg TV’s Bloomberg Tech.

Speaking with Bloomberg host Ed, Garman outlined how the cloud computing giant is navigating unprecedented demand, expanding its custom silicon offerings, and making multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investments to keep pace with customer needs.

Below is a breakdown of the core details and developments outlined during the interview.

1. Broad-Based Growth Beyond Frontier Labs

While headline-grabbing AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are driving significant model training on AWS, Garman emphasized that the growth is widespread. Startups and enterprise clients in financial services, healthcare, retail, and media are adopting AI to streamline operations and create new customer experiences. Unlike competitors who may rely heavily on a small handful of massive clients, AWS’s expansion is distributed across a broad customer base.

2. A $25 Billion AI Business Shift Toward "Inference"

Garman noted that AWS’s AI business currently operates at a $25 billion revenue run rate. This figure encompasses model training from tech giants, but an increasingly large portion comes from inference—running existing models via services like Amazon Bedrock to power real-world applications and agentic workloads.

Garman highlighted that customer spend is steadily shifting toward inference, where direct business value is generated for end customers.

3. Capacity Shortages and Massive $220 Billion Capex

Addressing Amazon’s overall capital expenditure—which stands at $220 billion this year, up by $20 billion—Garman confirmed that AWS will continue heavy capital spending next year. Demand continues to significantly outstrip supply, forcing AWS to secure long-term agreements:

4. Custom Silicon Strategy: Trainium and Graviton

The $25 billion run rate for AWS’s chip business stems from renting out capacity powered by its in-house processors, rather than selling chips outright.

5. Open-Weight AI Models and Regulation

Explaining AWS’s decision to sign a recent open-weights letter, Garman advocated for a balanced approach to government oversight:

When & Outlook

The interview captures AWS at a pivotal operational moment—experiencing record-setting demand while racing to scale its physical data centers and custom chips. With compute capacity booked years in advance, AWS plans to sustain elevated capital expenditure levels into next year to construct the infrastructure necessary to satisfy global enterprise demand.

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