E-commerce giant Amazon is shifting its strategy, pouring more than $100 billion into data centers over the next decade to catch the wave of the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI).

After years of dominating retail and logistics, Amazon is betting on AI as its next growth driver. The huge investment of more than 100 billion USD announced by Amazon Web Services (AWS) - the branch in charge of Amazon's cloud computing segment, shows the ambition of the "giant" from Seattle to lead the AI ​​race.

John Felton, Chief Financial Officer of AWS, compared building AI infrastructure today to building Amazon's massive delivery network in the past, and said, "It's still pretty nebulous." ”. AWS is expanding its operations in Virginia, Ohio, and beyond to meet AI's massive computing resource demands.

This strategic change is clearly demonstrated by Amazon's capital expenditure ratio. Last year, Amazon's total capital expenditures decreased, mainly due to limited investments in logistics and transportation. However, the share of infrastructure spending, primarily on AWS, increased sharply. Amazon's data center capital spending, including rental costs, hit a decade high last year, accounting for 53% of total capital spending, according to market research firm Dell'Oro Group. .

Amazon expects the cloud business, which is its "money printing machine", will explode even more thanks to AI. “We are laser-focused on delivering that capacity right now,” asserted Kevin Miller, Vice President of Global Data Centers at AWS. Amazon aims to earn tens of billions of dollars in revenue from AI in the next few years.

Amazon's move comes in the context that the company is considered by some experts to be lagging behind other technology giants in the field of AI. However, Amazon affirms that they are not losing in this race and AWS's AI capabilities have been warmly received by customers. Recently, Amazon deployed an AI tool to generate product listing information in the European market and attracted more than 30,000 sellers to use it.

The fact that Amazon "plays big" to take the lead is not new. Previously, the company invested heavily in delivery infrastructure to affirm its dominant position in the e-commerce field and meet explosive demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is those huge investments that contributed to Amazon becoming the fifth American company in history to reach the $2,000 billion market value milestone last week.