Cloud-Computing Providers See Generative AI as Business Driver

The three largest cloud-computing providers reportedly see generative artificial intelligence (AI) as a business driver.

Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google have been putting the technology front and center in their sales pitches since OpenAI’s ChatGPT become a sensation, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday (March 27).

Microsoft has been promoting the efficiencies companies can gain by using AI through the cloud. Google has opened access to one of its previously in-house-only AI programs to software developers using its cloud services. Amazon has been telling customers that it provides access to a variety of AI models, according to the report.

This push comes at a time when demand for cloud-computing services has been slowing, with cloud services of the three companies expected to see revenue growth of 18% this year — which is half the growth rate they had last year, the report said.

The fourth-largest provider of cloud-computing services, Oracle, attributed its strong performance in the most recent quarter to customers’ increased use of AI tools, per the report.

“There’s actually more demand for AI processing than there is available capacity,” Oracle Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison said during a March 9 earnings call.

As PYMNTS reported March 1, the world’s biggest tech companies are moving their AI experiments to center stage.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and other tech giants have long used proprietary AI tools to support both front-end and back-end business processes, but they are now bringing those tools to the forefront of their business.

Technical innovations powered by generative AI have taken on a rapidly increased prominence across the marketplace due to the viral success of ChatGPT, and tech giants — whose business valuations have been hammered over the past year — are turning to the technology to reclaim both their innovation accolades and the high-growth valuations that bleeding-edge organizations tend to command.

In February, Google announced it is investing around $300 million in Anthropic, an AI firm, while Anthropic said it had chosen Google as its preferred cloud provider.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent company Alphabet, said the company will aim to “unlock the incredible opportunities AI enables,” adding that he thinks the technology is journeying toward an “inflection point.”