Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported its strongest quarterly growth in over three years, while Reddit eyes AI-powered search as a major opportunity, according to recent earnings reports. Simultaneously, Roblox is working to attract more adult players, and startups are emerging to simplify AI tool creation.
AWS ended 2025 with $35.6 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, marking a 24% year-on-year increase, its largest growth rate in 13 quarters, according to Amazon. The annual revenue run rate for the cloud service is $142 billion. Amazon also projects $200 billion in capital expenditures throughout 2026, across AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites, up from $131.8 billion in 2025, as reported in its earnings. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted the significance of the growth, stating, "Its very different having 24 year-over-year growth on 142 billion annualized run rate than to have a higher percentage growth on a meaningfully smaller base, which is the case with our competitors."
Reddit, during its fourth-quarter earnings call, indicated that its AI-powered search engine could be a significant opportunity for its business, potentially impacting its bottom line. The company is merging traditional and AI search, believing generative AI search will be superior for most queries. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stated, "Theres a type of query were, I think, particularly good at I would argue, the best on the internet which is questions that have no answers, where the answer actually is multiple perspectives from lots of people." While search is not yet monetized, the company sees a large market opportunity.
In other tech news, Roblox is focusing on attracting more players over 18, following the rollout of age verification last year. The platform is shifting its focus to high-fidelity shooters, RPGs, sports, and racing games. According to its 2025 year-end earnings report, 45% of Roblox's daily active users are over 18.
Meanwhile, startups are emerging to address the challenges of building and launching custom applications using AI tools. Ilan Zerbib, former director of engineering for payments at Shopify, launched Sapiom, a startup developing the financial layer to help nontechnical creators. Sapiom recently raised $15 million to help AI agents buy their own tech tools.
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