of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZNCloud service Amazon Web Services is expected to hit historic numbers this year, partly thanks to its Bedrock offering and growing demand for artificial intelligence, according to a survey by Mizuho Securities.
Mizuho Quarterly AWS The customer survey also found an increase in executive business center meetings. This is where a company’s key decision makers meet with AWS. These typically lead to consolidated deals within 60 days versus the standard 90-day sales cycle. These types of meetings increased by 20% in the last month among respondents.
The Mizuho survey includes input from 300 Fortune 1000 companies.
The survey also found growth in proofs of concept for new use cases with Gen-AI across a range of industries. Financial services and insurance use cases increased 25% in automated customer service; healthcare cases increased 75% due to drug discovery; and production cases grew 40% on real-time diagnostics on cars.
“These trends validate AWS’ Bedrock, a managed service for accessing LLMs, including Anthropic’s industry-leading Claude 3,” Mizuho’s James Lee said in a statement.
Customers also intend to spend larger portions of their budgets on infrastructure. According to respondents, that spending increased by 35% to 45%. Once again, AI has driven the acceleration.
“AWS customers are focusing on moving a critical mass of data to the cloud for long-term Gen-AI deployment; and existing data in the cloud is being upgraded to vectorized or unstructured data warehousing to optimize Gen-AI,” Lee noted.
Due to these survey results, Mizuho reiterated its Buy rating on Amazon and its price target of $230. It still considers Amazon a “Better Pick.”
Other analysts are also noticing AWS’ success.
“AWS has been growing at a rapid pace and remains the leading cloud services provider,” said Seeking Alpha analyst and contributor Envision Research. “AWS sales in the third quarter increased 12% from year-ago levels and contributed to operating profit of $7 billion… Looking ahead, I see AWS results further improving as a result of AMZN continues to integrate AI capabilities.”
Amazon holds a Buy rating from Seeking Alpha analysts and a Strong Buy rating from Wall Street analysts, while Seeking Alpha’s quantitative system rates it a Hold.