• by Sarah Mahoney , Yesterday

While Amazon's cloud computing and AI investments grabbed most of the day's big headlines, the company's advertising and retail divisions turned in strong first-quarter results with plenty to unpack.

Ad sales climbed 24% to $17.24 billion, above Wall Street forecasts, driven in part by new features like Amazon Audiences, which lets advertisers buy spots on Netflix using Amazon's proprietary shopping, streaming and browsing signals. The company also launched Creative Agent, an agentic AI solution for advertisers in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

Retail was similarly strong. Revenue in the online stores segment — still the largest share of Amazon's total sales — rose 12% to $64.3 billion, topping analysts' estimates of $62.7 billion. Amazon expanded to include some 600 new brands, extended same-day delivery windows to one to three hours, and rolled out 30-minute delivery in key international markets. The company also announced that this year's Prime Day will arrive in June, a month earlier than usual.

Overall, net sales rose 17% to $181.5 billion, compared with $155.7 billion in the same period a year ago. Net income nearly doubled, to $30.3 billion from $17.1 billion a year earlier.

Cloud computing also beat expectations. AWS revenue rose to $37.59 billion in the quarter, up from $29.27 billion a year ago, topping analysts' estimates of $36.64 billion. The division now accounts for nearly 21% of Amazon's total revenue.

"Overall results are positive, as consumer spending remains stable, the expansion of grocery and same-day delivery continues to drive demand, and artificial intelligence supports surging AWS growth," writes Dan Romanoff, who covers the company for Morningstar. "Further, profitability is impressive against various profitability headwinds."

For the second quarter, Amazon anticipates sales growth of 16% to 19%, or $194 billion to $199 billion.