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 outcomes on Thursday, after Microsoft and Google's dull reports jolted financier faith in Big Tech's billion-dollar financial investments in AI.

Shares of significant tech companies rose in the past two years on the belief that enormous datacenter requires for artificial-intelligence innovations would power investment for several years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slowing growth at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, the 2nd- and third-biggest cloud players, has stimulated some caution from experts 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 also which's why its development rate isn't quite up to what the market might have expected," said Bob O'Donnell, chief expert at TECHnalysis Research.

Some experts see the weakness at rivals as an that Amazon may have caught up in the AI race through efforts consisting of doubling its investment in Anthropic and using a large selection of AI models on its cloud platform.

"We in fact think that AWS is regaining share. It had been growing a lot slower than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for a duration of time, however 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 analyst Gil Luria said.

The company has actually maintained a higher appraisal than a few 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 outcomes are also likely to gain from a healthy vacation shopping season, after competing retailers such as Target and prawattasao.awardspace.info a variety of apparel business provided 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 previously this year, experts say Amazon is primed for a rebound in the retail business, which has affected its post-earnings share movements over the past two quarters.

Data from Adobe Analytics showed U.S. consumers splurged online between November and December 2024, investing more than $240 billion, drawn by deep discount rates on whatever from TVs to toys.

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

Amazon has likewise tried to improve shipment times and expanded product merchandise, including its focus on grocery, pharmacy and fashion - relocations experts state will assist move development.

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

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