Amazon first quarter profits have more than tripled driven by rising demand for artificial intelligence, which helped to bolster sales growth in its cloud computing division.
Profits for the online retail giant rocketed to £8.3bn ($10.4bn) in the three months to 31 March 2024, up from £2.6bn ($3.2bn) last year.
Sales jumped 13% to £114.8bn ($143.3bn), with international sales up 10% to £25.6bn ($31.9bn).
Amazon said it delivered to Prime members at its fastest ever speeds during the quarter with 3 out 4 items in London delivered the same or next day in March.
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The group continued to gain momentum in its cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), with sales up 17% to £20bn ($25bn).
The retailer laid out plans to spend huge sums to support the fast-growing technology and chief executive Andy Jassy said the division is “now at a £80bn ($100bn) annual revenue run rate”.
Amazon expects to deliver sales between £115bn ($144bn) and £119bn ($149bn) for its second quarter, a 7% to 11% increase on last year.
Jassy said: “It was a good start to the year across the business, and you can see that in both our customer experience improvements and financial results.
“It’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward.”
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