Amazon surpassed Wall Street forecasts with revenue of $181.5 billion in the March quarter, up 17% from the year earlier. CEO Andy Jassy noted Project Hail Mary‘s nearly $615 million at the box office to date among the company’s achievements for the three months.

Sales and profit numbers were a beat as was the key AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud business with $37.6 billion in revenue, up 28%.

Net income rose to $30 billion from $17 billion, including a pre-tax gain of $16.8 billion from investments in Anthropic. Earnings per share of $2.78 rose from $1.59.

Free cash flow dipped to $1.2 billion for the trailing twelve months as Amazon ramped up investments in artificial intelligence. There’s an AI arms race on now among tech giants and stocks were volatile in late trading as a handful including Meta and Alphabet also reported numbers after the bell. Amazon shares, which have had a great run this year, are off 4% after hours.

“AWS is growing 28% (our fastest growth in 15 quarters) on a very large base, our chips business topped a $20 billion revenue run rate (growing triple digits year-over-year), Advertising grew to over $70 billion in TTM [trailing 12-month] revenue, and unit growth in our Stores reached 15% (the highest since the tail end of covid lockdowns). We also hit exciting milestones with delivery speed (more than 1 billion items same-day or overnight in 2026 and counting), Project Hail Mary (nearly $615 million at the box office to date and the second most successful non-sequel, non-franchise opening of recent memory), and Amazon Leo continues to resonate with prospective customers, with Delta Airlines the latest to sign on.”

“We’re making customers’ lives easier and better every day across all our businesses, and their response is driving significant growth,” said Jassy. “We’re in the middle of some of the biggest inflections of our lifetime, we’re well positioned to lead, and I’m very optimistic about what’s ahead for our customers and Amazon.”

Media and entertainment, including Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video, falls under Amazon services and is not broken out. But executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas early this month stressed a commitment to theatrical releasing. “This isn’t a test or an experiment. Our commitment to release at least 15 films every year into your theaters is on schedule,” Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, promised theater owners at the annual gathering of exhibitors.

Achievements the company cited during the quarter:

-Added Amazon Audiences for advertisers using Amazon Ads to buy advertising on Netflix, enabling brands to use Amazon’s proprietary shopping, streaming, and browsing signals, to reach relevant Netflix audiences and drive even stronger performance.

-Launched Creative Agent, an agentic AI solution for advertisers in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Creative Agent acts as a virtual creative partner, helping advertisers research, brainstorm, and generate full-funnel ad campaigns from concept to completion using conversational guidance and Amazon’s retail data.

-Debuted exclusive coverage of NBA SoFi Play-In Tournament, averaging nearly 2.8 million U.S. viewers on Prime Video across six exclusive broadcasts, up 18% compared to last year on cable.

More to come