AI Hyperscaler Race: Sprinting — Microsoft, Google, Oracle; Strolling — AWS

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I reveal why AWS’s growth, though
strong in isolation, looks sluggish compared to its peers.


Highlights


00:29 — We're seeing a distinct split looking at
the Q2 numbers. We've got three sprinters — Microsoft, Google,
and Oracle — and we've got one stroller, which is AWS. Now, also,
just a quick detail: the first three companies — Microsoft,
Google, and AWS — all follow the quarterly calendar pattern.


01:30 — Microsoft in Q1 grew 20% to $42.4
billion. In Q2, that growth shot up from 20% to 27%, revenue for
Microsoft Cloud was $46.7 billion. Google: Q1, 28% growth to
$12.3 billion. Q2, that growth accelerated from 28% to 32%;
revenue reached $13.6 billion. Oracle: 23% growth in what I'm
calling Q1 to $6.2 billion. That growth jumped to 27% in its most
recent quarter: $6.7 billion.


02:39 — Oracle has guided that its fiscal 2026
RPO — that’ll end May 31 — will grow 100%. So while its cloud
revenue currently isn't that big, its RPO is enormous, and its
growing very fast there. Now, here's the outlier: AWS. Q1 grew
17% to $29.3 billion. Come over to Q2 — again, it was the slowest
growing — 17.5% to almost $31 billion.


03:21 — I think the point to look at here,
though, is all four of the companies' growth accelerated from Q1
to Q2. But while the others all showed significant jumps in
growth rate Q1 to Q2, Amazon — or AWS — was a modest half-point:
from 17 to 17.5%.


04:01 — Taking their total Q2 revenues, who got
what chunk? Microsoft: 47%. Google: 13.9%. Oracle: 6.8%. AWS:
31.6%. Who is grabbing more of the new business? Who are
customers — right here, right now — signing up with? Look at AWS:
31.6% of the total, but only 20.8% of the new revenue meaning
that it is taking less share than its overall size and mass would
indicate.


05:19 — Now, AWS — I will say before I close
here — it’s perhaps unfair, in the category of, you know, "life's
not always fair," that AWS — almost at about a $30 billion scale
— grew 17.5%. And in any other industry, at any other time, that
would be lauded as absolutely stunning and fantastic. But
compared to their competitors, it's not doing as well. So it's a
wild time in the Cloud Wars.


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