Amazon.com Inc. is significantly ramping up its investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and data center infrastructure, pledging tens of billions of dollars to enhance cloud capacity as demand for AI services surges in both government and commercial sectors.
The company’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is at the forefront of these investments, with executives indicating that AWS will dominate Amazon’s capital spending in the coming years. Notably, in early 2025, Amazon announced plans for AWS to invest up to $50 billion to bolster AI and high-performance computing infrastructure specifically for U.S. government customers. This initiative aims to develop new and upgrade existing data centers in secure AWS regions, facilitating classified and national security workloads utilized by federal agencies.
Amazon ranks first in Digital Commerce 360’s Top 2000 Database, which catalogues the largest online retailers in North America by annual e-commerce sales. Additionally, it stands third in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, which ranks the top 100 marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV).
The company’s ambitious investment is expected to enhance its power capacity by 1.3 gigawatts, supporting essential functions such as AI model training, extensive data analytics, and advanced simulations for defense, intelligence, cybersecurity, and scientific research agencies. This announcement represents one of the most substantial commitments to AI infrastructure publicly disclosed by a U.S. technology firm and highlights the critical role cloud providers play in the modernization of federal operations.
In tandem with its government initiatives, Amazon is also expanding its commercial cloud offerings. It plans to invest $15 billion in new data center campuses in Northern Indiana, aimed at supporting AI and cloud services for enterprise clients. This development is projected to create over 1,000 permanent jobs along with thousands of construction and supply-chain positions. The facilities will address the significant energy demands associated with AI computing, particularly concerning large language models (LLMs) and machine learning applications.
Similar investments have been announced by Amazon in various U.S. regions and internationally, although the company has yet to disclose a comprehensive figure for its total global AI-related data center expenditure.
Amazon’s escalating AI push is contributing to a broader uptick in capital expenditures, with total capital spending exceeding $100 billion in 2025, heavily influenced by AWS investments. The expenditures encompass data centers, servers, networking equipment, and custom AI chips. Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer, Brian Olsavsky, noted that capital spending is expected to remain high in 2026 as the company seeks to expand its cloud capacity to meet rising customer demands.
To facilitate this growth, Amazon returned to the debt markets in 2025, launching a $12 billion bond offering, one of its most significant in recent years. The funds will be allocated for general corporate purposes, including further infrastructure investments.
Amazon’s strategy comes at a time when competitors like Microsoft and Google are also aggressively investing in AI infrastructure, resulting in unprecedented levels of data center construction across the United States. While this scale of investment has raised concerns among investors regarding long-term returns, power availability, and the profitability timeline for AI services, Amazon executives maintain that this spending is crucial for sustaining AWS’s competitive edge as AI evolves into an essential driver of cloud demand rather than remaining a niche service.