By Deborah Mary Sophia

Feb 5 (Reuters) - The pressure is on Amazon.com to provide on lofty expectations for cloud computing in its fourth-quarter results on Thursday, after Microsoft and Google's lackluster reports jolted financier faith in Big Tech's billion-dollar investments in AI.

Shares of significant tech companies rose in the previous 2 years on the belief that massive datacenter needs for artificial-intelligence technologies would power financial investment for years.

But that was before Chinese start-up DeepSeek said it had actually attained AI advancements at a fraction of the expense, precipitating a selloff in technology stocks that some state was overdue.

Still, Amazon may be better positioned than rivals to profit from less expensive AI, experts state, tandme.co.uk due to its massive cloud company and lower exposure to pricey large-language designs that power apps like ChatGPT.

Amazon Web Services, the world's biggest cloud companies, is expected to publish its strongest profits increase in 8 quarters at 19.3%, according to data put together by LSEG.

But Microsoft and valetinowiki.racing Meta were both required to protect their AI costs strategies recently, and shares of Google-parent Alphabet plunged 8% on Wednesday after it said it would be spending more on capex than experts anticipated.

"Microsoft and Google results have put even more of a microscope on Amazon's cloud growth," said Dave Wagner, portfolio supervisor at Aptus Capital Advisors, which holds shares in all 3 technology companies.

"But if Amazon can crush it on their cloud numbers, the marketplace's going to absolutely like that report."

The business was the very first huge cloud provider to welcome DeepSeek's AI designs last month and has said its capital costs, mainly on AI, would be more than the $75 billion it approximated for surgiteams.com 2024.

Slowing development at Microsoft Azure and ratemywifey.com Google Cloud, the 2nd- and third-biggest cloud players, has actually sparked some caution from analysts about AWS' performance.

"Microsoft said it was capability constrained, Google said it was capacity constrained. More than likely, Amazon is going to state it may have been capability constrained as well and that's why its development rate isn't quite as much as what the market may have anticipated," said Bob O'Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.

Some analysts see the weak point at competitors as an indication that Amazon might have captured up in the AI race through efforts consisting of doubling its investment in Anthropic and offering a broad selection of AI designs on its cloud platform.

"We really believe that AWS is regaining share. It had actually been growing a lot slower than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for an amount of time, but our company believe that as Amazon has caught up on its AI offering, it might have less of a deceleration than Azure and Google Cloud," D.A. Davidson expert Gil Luria said.

The business has actually maintained a higher appraisal than a few of its competitors, with an existing forward price-to-earnings ratio of almost 39. Microsoft's forward P/E is 29 and Alphabet's 22.4, according to LSEG data.

RETAIL STRENGTH

The e-commerce giant's outcomes are likewise most likely to gain from a healthy vacation shopping season, after competing retailers such as Target and a slew of clothing companies released rosy forecasts over the previous month.

Amazon's North American sales for the 4th quarter are projected to increase 9% year-on-year. After a slowdown in online sales growth earlier this year, experts say Amazon is primed for a rebound in the retail service, which has actually influenced its post-earnings share movements over the previous 2 quarters.

Data from Adobe Analytics revealed U.S. consumers spent lavishly online in between November and December 2024, spending more than $240 billion, drawn by deep discount rates on whatever from TVs to toys.

The holiday spending development rate of 8.7% nearly doubled from the 4.9% recorded in 2023, the data revealed.

Amazon has actually likewise attempted to enhance delivery times and expanded item merchandise, including its focus on grocery, pharmacy and moves experts state will help move development.

"Most indicators are that it was a good quarter. There was a great holiday for the consumer therefore there's plenty of factor to believe Amazon will have succeeded because side of the organization," Luria said.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru