Amazon.com shares fell 4% on Friday after the technology heavyweight's quarterly cloud computing revenue growth disappointed investors waiting for a bigger payoff from heavy spending on AI.

Amazon’s increased spending comes after a few years of cost-cutting from the company. Jassy announced layoffs in 2022 that eventually affected 27,000 people through the first half of 2023. Layoffs have continued through 2024 and even at the beginning of 2025 in smaller waves.

Amazon shares slid after the online-retail and cloud-services giant offered a first-quarter outlook that came up short of Wall Street’s expectations while forecasting bumpy trends in its cloud business.

Amazon.com investors drove shares down sharply on Thursday due to weakness in the retailer's cloud computing unit and lower-than-expected forecasts for first-quarter revenue and profit.