Amazon has delayed some commitments around new data center leases, Wells Fargo analysts said on Monday, the latest sign that economic concerns may be affecting tech companies’ spending plans.
A week ago, a Microsoft executive said the software company was slowing down or temporarily holding off on advancing early build-outs. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are the leading providers of cloud infrastructure, and both have ramped up their capital expenditures in recent quarters to meet the demands of the generative artificial intelligence boom.
“Over the weekend, we heard from several industry sources that AWS has paused a portion of its leasing discussions on the colocation side (particularly international ones),” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a note. They added that “the positioning is similar to what we’ve heard recently from MSFT,” in that both companies are reeling in some new projects but not canceling signed deals.
Tech stocks have been pressured across the board this year as President Donald Trump’s proposals for widespread tariffs raised the prospect for dramatically higher costs on imports of equipment while also threatening to slow the economy. Cloud infrastructure providers have been aggressively announcing plans to collectively spend hundreds of billions of dollars securing Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) and building new data centers.
That was before the announcement on tariffs earlier this month. Microsoft and Amazon both report quarterly results next week. Their stock prices were down on Monday, bringing Amazon’s decline for the year to 25% and Microsoft’s drop to 15%.
An AWS spokesperson didn’t immediately provide a comment. Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that he did not see the company cutting down on data center construction.
Wells Fargo has a hold rating on Amazon shares.
