Cyber Monday is a big day for Amazon's on the e-commerce front. The tech giant is also flexing its muscles as an enterprise tech powerhouse as it kicks off the annual Re:Invent conference for Amazon Web Services. Amazon stock rose Monday as the company already announcing a list of product updates.
The Las Vegas event brings together AWS customers, technologies and other spectators while typically offering new product announcement and updates. Last year, the company touted updated version of its custom Trainium AI chips and launched Q, a chatbot for developers. So far this year, Amazon already made a big announcement ahead of the event: an additional $4 billion invested into AI startup Anthropic.
Early Monday, Amazon announced new generative AI enhancements for Amazon Connect, AWS' cloud contact center offering. The tools will help companies offer more efficient customer service, according to Amazon, including by using Amazon Q to create "relevant, automated, and dynamic self-service experiences."
Amazon also announced it will offer physical locations where customer can plug their storage devices in and upload data to the AWS cloud. The first locations are in Los Angeles and New York. The updates are among a list the company has already published on a live blog tracking the conference.
On the stock market today, Amazon stock is up 1.8% at 211.76 in recent action.
What Analysts Are Watching From AWS Re:Invent
More announcements are likely to come tomorrow. This year's event is the first under AWS Chief Executive Matt Garman, who took over leadership of the cloud business in June. He is scheduled to give a keynote Tuesday at 11 a.m. eastern time. Garman told the Wall Street Journal Monday that he expects to make announcements for "real, needle-moving changes" involving AI and computing.
Analysts will be the watching closely. Amazon plans to spend more than $100 billion to build AI-capable data centers over the next decade, a big bet that AI will drive future cloud spending. It is competing against Microsoft, Google and others for that business.
BofA Securities analyst Justin Post projects Amazon will spend $52.9 billion next year on cloud-related capital expenditures, up 14% year-over-year.
Post said in a recent client note that he expects Garman's keynote to "highlight a strong partnership with Anthropic, as well as multimodal capabilities, GenAI tools, key AI customer wins and use cases, potential timelines around (Nvidia's) Blackwell coming to AWS, and stronger performance of Trainium 2 chips."
Garman will also likely highlight how AWS is a leader in a "still-early cloud market," which Post said represents still just 10% to 15% of the $5.3 trillion in annual IT spending, citing estimates from Gartner.
Amazon Stock Up 39% This Year
Amazon stock has gained 39% year-to-date. That includes a 5.5% gain last week. Prior to last week strong performance, shares had pulled back in recent weeks from all-time high of 215.90 on Nov. 14.
Amazon stock last Tuesday retook a former 201.20 consolidation pattern buy point, according to IBD MarketSurge. The stock is now just above a 5% buy zone from the 201.20 entry, MarketSurge shows. Shares first broke out past that level on Nov. 6 as part of a broader rally following the election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term.
