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 major tech business rose in the past two years on the belief that massive datacenter needs for artificial-intelligence innovations would power investment for many years.

But that was before Chinese startup DeepSeek said it had attained AI breakthroughs at a fraction of the expense, precipitating a selloff in technology stocks that some say was overdue.

Still, Amazon may be better positioned than competitors to capitalize on more affordable AI, experts state, due to its massive cloud service and garagesale.es lower exposure to costly large-language models that power apps like ChatGPT.

Amazon Web Services, the world's largest cloud services supplier, is expected to post its strongest income increase in eight quarters at 19.3%, according to information compiled by LSEG.

But Microsoft and Meta were both required to defend their AI costs plans last week, and bbarlock.com shares of Google-parent Alphabet plunged 8% on Wednesday after it said it would be investing more on capex than analysts prepared for.

"Microsoft and Google results have put even more of a microscopic lense on Amazon's cloud growth," said Dave Wagner, portfolio supervisor at Aptus Capital Advisors, bbarlock.com 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 very first big cloud service provider to accept DeepSeek's AI designs last month and has said its capital costs, mainly on AI, would be more than the $75 billion it estimated for 2024.

Slowing development at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, the second- and forum.altaycoins.com third-biggest cloud gamers, has actually sparked some caution from analysts about AWS' efficiency.

"Microsoft said it was capacity constrained, Google said it was capability constrained. More than likely, Amazon is going to say it might have been capacity constrained also and that's why its growth rate isn't rather approximately what the market might have anticipated," said Bob O'Donnell, chief expert at TECHnalysis Research.

Some experts see the weak point at competitors as a sign that Amazon might have captured up in the AI race through efforts consisting of doubling its investment in Anthropic and using a wide selection of AI models on its cloud platform.

"We really think that AWS is regaining share. It had been growing a lot slower than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for a time period, however our company 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 analyst Gil Luria said.

The business has 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 likewise likely to gain from a healthy vacation shopping season, after rival retailers such as Target and a slew of apparel companies issued rosy forecasts over the previous month.

Amazon's North American sales for the 4th quarter are forecasted to increase 9% year-on-year. After a slowdown in online sales development previously this year, analysts state Amazon is primed for a rebound in the retail business, which has actually affected its post-earnings share movements over the previous 2 quarters.

Data from Adobe Analytics showed U.S. consumers spent lavishly online between November and wiki.snooze-hotelsoftware.de 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 information showed.

Amazon has also tried to improve shipment times and broadened item merchandise, its concentrate on grocery, drug store and style - relocations analysts state will help propel development.

"Most indications are that it was an excellent quarter. There was a good vacation season for the consumer therefore there's lots of reason to think Amazon will have done well in that side of business," Luria said.

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