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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 uninspired reports jolted financier faith in Big Tech's billion-dollar investments in AI.

Shares of significant tech business rose in the past two years on the belief that huge datacenter needs for artificial-intelligence innovations would power financial investment for years.

But that was before Chinese startup DeepSeek said it had attained AI advancements at a portion of the cost, precipitating a selloff in technology stocks that some state was overdue.

Still, Amazon may be much better located than competitors to profit from less expensive AI, experts state, due to its massive cloud business and lower exposure to costly large-language designs that power apps like ChatGPT.

Amazon Web Services, the world's biggest cloud providers, is expected to publish its greatest income boost in 8 quarters at 19.3%, according to data put together by LSEG.

But Microsoft and Meta were both forced to safeguard their AI budget recently, and shares of Google-parent Alphabet plunged 8% on Wednesday after it said it would be more on capex than analysts expected.

"Microsoft and Google outcomes have actually put a lot more of a microscopic lense on Amazon's cloud growth," said Dave Wagner, portfolio supervisor at Aptus Capital Advisors, which holds shares in all 3 innovation companies.

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

The business was the first big cloud service provider to embrace DeepSeek's AI models last month and has said its capital costs, mainly on AI, would be more than the $75 billion it approximated for 2024.

Slowing growth at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, the second- and third-biggest cloud players, has sparked some care from experts about AWS' efficiency.

"Microsoft said it was capacity constrained, Google said it was capacity constrained. More than likely, Amazon is going to state it might have been capability constrained also which's why its growth rate isn't quite approximately what the marketplace might have anticipated," said Bob O'Donnell, primary expert at TECHnalysis Research.

Some analysts see the weakness at rivals as a sign that Amazon might have caught up in the AI race through efforts including doubling its financial investment in Anthropic and using 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 a duration of time, however we believe that as Amazon has actually caught up on its AI offering, it may 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 likely to gain from a healthy holiday shopping season, after rival retailers such as Target and a slew of apparel companies released rosy forecasts over the previous month.

Amazon's North American sales for annunciogratis.net the fourth quarter are projected to rise 9% year-on-year. After a downturn in online sales growth earlier this year, experts say Amazon is primed for a rebound in the retail company, which has actually influenced its post-earnings share motions over the previous two quarters.

Data from Adobe Analytics showed U.S. buyers spent lavishly online in between November and December 2024, investing more than $240 billion, drawn by deep discounts on everything from TVs to toys.

The holiday spending development rate of 8.7% almost doubled from the 4.9% tape-recorded in 2023, the information showed.

Amazon has actually also tried to enhance delivery times and expanded product merchandise, including its concentrate on grocery, drug store and style - relocations analysts say will assist move development.

"Most indicators are that it was a great quarter. There was a great holiday for the customer and so there's lots of reason to think Amazon will have succeeded because side of the business," Luria said.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)