AMD’s data center revenue nearly doubles, AWS grows at its fastest pace in nearly five years, and Apple sets a September-quarter record

AMD: data center revenue nearly doubles

On Nov. 3, AMD reported record third-quarter revenue of $13.4 billion, up 45% from a year earlier. Data center revenue jumped 97% to a record $8.5 billion. The company credits demand for EPYC processors and the launch of the Instinct MI450 series. The Client and Gaming segment fell 8% to $3.7 billion, with gaming revenue down 40% to $773 million. Embedded revenue rose 29% to $1.1 billion.

GAAP net income was about $2.43 billion, or $1.46 per share. Non-GAAP earnings per share rose 74% to $2.09. For the fourth quarter, AMD expects revenue of about $17 billion, plus or minus 3%, which would be growth of about 66% from a year earlier. It expects a non-GAAP gross margin of about 55%.

“Demand for our Instinct and EPYC products continued to strengthen,” CEO Lisa Su said. Su added that AMD expects “growth to accelerate further in the fourth quarter as we scale Helios and ‘Venice’ production.” According to the release, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle are running models on the first MI450-based Helios racks. AMD also announced agreements to acquire World Labs and Taalas.

Amazon: AWS posts its fastest growth in nearly five years

On Oct. 29, Amazon reported third-quarter net sales of $201.9 billion, up 12%. AWS revenue rose 39.3% to $46.0 billion. The company called that its “fastest growth in nearly five years,” with an annualized revenue run rate of $184 billion. AWS operating income rose to $17.8 billion from $11.4 billion a year earlier. Amazon’s total operating income was $28.1 billion. Its 13.9% operating margin was the highest in company history.

Net income slipped to $20.7 billion from $21.2 billion. According to the release, the year-earlier quarter included a $9.5 billion pretax gain from Amazon’s investment in Anthropic. Amazon expects about $220 billion in capital expenditures for 2026.

“There has never been a trillion dollar revenue business, and we may have two of them in the next 5-10 years,” CEO Andy Jassy said in the release. According to the call transcript Amazon published, AWS has a backlog of $578 billion. “We’re installing an AI accelerator about every 14 seconds,” Jassy said. Token volume on Bedrock grew about 17-fold over the past year. Amazon expects AWS to grow more than 40% in 2027 and 2028. According to TechCrunch, spending in 2027 will be “meaningfully more.”

Apple: a September-quarter record

On Nov. 2, Apple reported results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. Revenue for the quarter, which ended Sept. 26, rose 12% to $114.5 billion, a September-quarter record. Diluted earnings per share rose 14% to $2.10, and net income was $30.7 billion. Gross margin was 47.9%. According to the release, tariff refunds contributed about 1 point of margin and 5 cents of earnings per share. Services revenue set an all-time record. Revenue for fiscal 2026 totaled $479 billion.

AI costs at Apple

Research and development spending rose 32% in the quarter, to $11.7 billion from $8.9 billion a year earlier. It was John Ternus’s first earnings call as CEO. According to MacRumors, Ternus reiterated plans for usage limits on server-side features such as Siri AI. Paid access for more capacity is also planned, though no price was given. CFO Kevan Parekh said, “on the server side, we have some inference costs.” Apple expects memory costs to rise further in the December quarter and revenue to grow 7% to 10%.