By Deborah Mary Sophia

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

Shares of significant tech companies surged in the previous two years on the belief that massive datacenter needs for artificial-intelligence innovations would power financial investment for code.snapstream.com several years.

But that was before Chinese startup DeepSeek said it had actually attained AI developments at a portion of the cost, precipitating a selloff in innovation stocks that some say was past due.

Still, Amazon may be better located than competitors to take advantage of less expensive AI, analysts state, due to its huge cloud company and lower direct exposure to costly large-language models that power apps like ChatGPT.

Amazon Web Services, the world's largest cloud services supplier, is anticipated to post its strongest earnings increase in 8 quarters at 19.3%, according to data put together by LSEG.

But Microsoft and larsaluarna.se Meta were both required to defend their AI budget last week, and classifieds.ocala-news.com shares of Google-parent Alphabet dropped 8% on Wednesday after it said it would be spending more on capex than analysts anticipated.

"Microsoft and Google results have put a lot more of a microscopic lense on Amazon's cloud development," said Dave Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, which holds shares in all three technology companies.

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

The company was the first huge cloud service provider to accept DeepSeek's AI models last month and garagesale.es has said its capital spending, mainly on AI, would be more than the $75 billion it estimated for 2024.

Slowing development at Microsoft Azure and clashofcryptos.trade Google Cloud, the second- and third-biggest cloud gamers, has actually stimulated some caution from analysts about AWS' efficiency.

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

Some experts see the weak point at competitors as an indication that Amazon may have caught up in the AI race through efforts consisting of doubling its financial investment in Anthropic and offering a broad choice of AI models on its cloud platform.

"We in fact think that AWS is regaining share. It had actually been growing a lot slower than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for a time period, however our company believe that as Amazon has actually captured up on its AI offering, it might have less of a deceleration than Azure and Google Cloud," D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said.

The business has actually maintained a greater appraisal than some of its competitors, with a current forward price-to-earnings ratio of almost 39. Microsoft's forward P/E is 29 and Alphabet's 22.4, according to LSEG information.

RETAIL STRENGTH

The e-commerce giant's results are also most likely to gain from a healthy holiday shopping season, iuridictum.pecina.cz after rival retailers such as Target and a multitude of garments business issued rosy projections over the past month.

Amazon's North American sales for the 4th quarter are forecasted to rise 9% year-on-year. After a slowdown in online sales growth previously this year, experts state Amazon is primed for a rebound in the retail service, which has influenced its post-earnings share motions over the past 2 quarters.

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

The vacation spending growth rate of 8.7% almost doubled from the 4.9% tape-recorded in 2023, the data revealed.

Amazon has also attempted to times and expanded product merchandise, including its concentrate on grocery, drug store and fashion - relocations analysts state will assist propel growth.

"Most indicators are that it was an excellent quarter. There was an excellent holiday for the customer therefore there's plenty of factor to think Amazon will have done well in that side of the company," Luria said.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru