Amazon earnings preview: Wall Street zeroes in on AWS and AI investments ahead of Q3 report (www.businessinsider.com)

Amazon will report Q3 results after the close Thursday, and Wall Street is zeroing in on AWS and the company’s AI investments as the key read-throughs. Street estimates call for $177.7B in revenue and $1.57 EPS, while analysts will probe AWS growth (third‑party data points point to ~18–18.5% YoY) and Amazon’s progress commercializing generative AI. The company has been spending heavily on data centers, capex and AI infrastructure even as it navigates July AWS layoffs, a $2.5B FTC settlement, tariff-related e‑commerce uncertainty and muted YTD stock performance (up ~4% in 2025). Analysts are split but mostly constructive: BofA sees potential operating income upside ($20.4B estimate vs. $19.7B Street), JPMorgan warns Amazon lags Azure/Google in GenAI positioning but expects AWS acceleration as supply‑chain gaps ease, UBS wants clearer AWS proof points but flags multi‑segment upside, and Wedbush is very bullish on margin improvement and AI monetization. For the AI/ML community these results matter because continued capex and data‑center expansion increase training and inference capacity, influence pricing/availability of cloud ML services, and shape whether Amazon will be a primary commercialization platform for generative AI tools versus Azure and Google Cloud.