Amazon just dropped its numbers. Honestly, if you were looking for a sign that the "AI fatigue" people keep talking about is real, you won't find it here. The amazon earnings q3 2025 results today paint a picture of a company that is basically morphing into an AI-first giant, with a retail business attached to the side to help pay the bills.
The headline figures are kind of staggering. Revenue hit $180.2 billion. That is a 13% jump from last year. More importantly, the cloud division—AWS—is officially back in high gear.
The AWS Re-Acceleration Is the Real Story
For a while there, everyone was worried that AWS was slowing down. Microsoft and Google were nipping at their heels. But this quarter? AWS sales grew 20% year-over-year to $33 billion. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, basically said they haven’t seen this kind of pace since 2022. It’s not just a fluke.
What’s actually driving this? It's the infrastructure. Amazon is pouring money into "Trainium2," their custom AI chip. They’ve built a massive cluster called Project Rainier with nearly 500,000 of these chips just to run Anthropic’s Claude models.
Why the stock jumped 13% after hours
Investors are funny. They usually hate it when companies spend too much. But today, they loved it. Even though Amazon is planning to drop roughly $125 billion on capital expenditures (CapEx) for the full year 2025, the market is seeing it as an investment in a "multi-billion-dollar" AI business that is growing 150% quarter over quarter.
The EPS (earnings per share) came in at $1.95. That completely blew past the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.58. When you beat expectations by nearly 40 cents, people notice.
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The FTC Settlement and the Layoff Reality
It wasn't all sunshine, though. If you look at the operating income, it looks flat at $17.4 billion. But there’s a catch.
Amazon took two massive one-time hits this quarter:
- A $2.5 billion legal settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
- About $1.8 billion in severance costs from those 14,000 role eliminations you probably heard about.
Without those "special charges," operating income would have been north of $21.7 billion.
"We're bringing in quite a bit of capacity today... maybe the bottleneck is power," Jassy noted during the call.
The layoffs are a bit of a weird one. Usually, companies cut staff to save money. Jassy claims this was more about "culture" and streamlining decision-making than just pure finance. Whether you believe that or not, the leaner structure is clearly helping the bottom line.
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Advertising Is the Secret Margin Machine
While everyone focuses on AWS, the advertising arm is quietly becoming a monster. Ad revenue grew 24% to $17.7 billion.
Think about that for a second. It's growing way faster than the actual retail stores. Every time you see a "Sponsored" product while looking for a toaster, that's pure margin for Amazon. It helps offset the thin margins of shipping physical boxes to people's houses.
- Online store sales: $67.4 billion (up 10%)
- Third-party seller services: $42.4 billion (up 12%)
- Physical stores (Whole Foods/Amazon Fresh): $5.6 billion (up 7%)
What Most People Get Wrong About the Cash Flow
If you glance at the free cash flow, you might panic. It dropped to $14.8 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared to over $47 billion a year ago.
That looks bad on paper.
But it’s intentional. Amazon is buying "property and equipment" like crazy. We’re talking $50.9 billion more than last year. They are essentially building the power grid and data centers for the next decade of AI. Jassy mentioned they added 3.8 gigawatts of power capacity in the last year alone. That is an insane amount of energy infrastructure for one company.
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Rufus and the New Shopping Reality
Have you tried Rufus yet? It's that AI assistant in the Amazon app. Apparently, 250 million people have used it this year.
The stats are kind of wild: shoppers using Rufus are 60% more likely to actually buy something. It’s moving from a "search for a keyword" experience to a "talk to an expert" experience. This is how Amazon plans to keep its retail lead as TikTok Shop and Temu try to grab market share.
Actionable Insights for Investors and Sellers
If you're tracking the amazon earnings q3 2025 results today, here is what you actually need to do with this information:
- Watch the CapEx in 2026: Amazon already signaled that the $125 billion spend will likely increase next year. If AWS growth stays at 20%+, the market stays happy. If it dips, that spending becomes a liability.
- Ad Strategy for Sellers: If you sell on Amazon, the 24% growth in ad revenue means the "organic" era is basically over. You need a sophisticated PPC (Pay-Per-Click) strategy to survive on page one now.
- AWS Backlog: The "cloud backlog" hit $200 billion this quarter. This is a massive "hidden" revenue number that guarantees work for years to-come.
- Holiday Outlook: Management guided Q4 sales between $206 billion and $213 billion. They are expecting a massive Q4, so the logistics network is going to be under serious pressure.
The big takeaway? Amazon isn't just a bookstore or a grocery store or even a cloud provider anymore. It is a massive AI-integrated utility. They are betting the house on the idea that every company on earth will eventually need to rent their AI "brain power." Based on these results, that bet is starting to pay off.
Start by reviewing your own AWS usage or seller ad spend to see if you're aligned with these growth trends. If you're an investor, keep a close eye on the "Project Rainier" updates, as that's where the next leg of growth is hidden.