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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I review Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s statements on AWS’s AI advancements, noting lack of evidence.
Highlights
00:48 — On Amazon’s Q3 earnings call at the end of October, Andy Jassy, I think, suffered a hallucination when he claimed that in the past 18 months, AWS has “crushed” both Microsoft and Google in terms of GenAI innovation, based on the number of new features being rolled out. Now, he offered no proof, no substantiation, no evidence, no numbers.
01:21 — I don’t know why he felt he had to do that. AWS had a terrific quarter, with cloud revenue up 19% to $27.5 billion. He said that its AI business is now a multi-billion-dollar business. Jassy went a little farther, claiming that in the past 18 months, AWS has released twice as many machine learning (ML) and GenAI features as the other leading cloud providers combined. But he offered zero evidence.
02:22 — This is the latest in a pattern of comments. If you go back to its Q1 earnings call, I said, “I guess Andy Jassy and Amazon don’t believe that Microsoft is a cloud provider,” because in late January on the Q1 earnings call, he said, “AWS has added more incremental quarter-over-quarter revenue“—that’s in Q1—”than any other cloud provider, as far as we can tell.”
Ask Cloud Wars AI Agent about this analysis
03:09 — But just a day or two earlier, Microsoft had reported its numbers. But here’s the puzzling thing about this January claim from Jassy. AWS had incremental quarter-over-quarter new revenue of $1.1 billion going from Q4 of last year to Q1 of this year. That is excellent — well done. But in the same period, Microsoft had an incremental quarter-over-quarter revenue of $1.9 billion, which is 40% higher than AWS. Yet, Jassy threw in this line: “as far as we can tell.”
04:08 — So it’s dropped that line over the past few quarters. But now this other claim has crept in. Perhaps AWS has developed more GenAI and ML features than Microsoft and Google combined. I don’t believe that, but perhaps it’s true. But I think that, very likely, Andy Jassy has done a disservice to AWS and its customers by making this unsubstantiated claim.
