The ‘Single Reason’ that Google, Microsoft and Amazon say hurt cloud business growth

Amazon, Microsoft and Google – the world’s three biggest cloud providers – fell short of meeting customer demand in the fourth quarter of 2024 (Q4 2024). The top executives of the three companies essentially point to a sole reason for this: capacity constraints in their data centers.

The capacity constraints stem from – shortages of AI chips, server components and energy supply issues – that are essentially hindering the growth of their cloud businesses, despite significant investments in AI infrastructure.