AWS Community Workforce Accelerator (Noah Berger/Getty Images)

Amazon taps the brakes on AI data center spending as economic jitters spread

Wells Fargo says the cloud provider is “digesting” a wave of aggressive lease-ups.

4/22/25 10:21AM

Amazon, the largest US cloud provider, is quietly hitting pause on its AI infrastructure expansion as heated economic uncertainty pushes tech biggies to scrutinize their billion-dollar bets on AI.

In a note Monday, Wells Fargo said Amazon has paused some data center lease talks for its cloud division, especially overseas. The firm said that while Amazon isn’t canceling deals, it is “digesting” a wave of aggressive lease-ups. “They’re tightening pre-lease windows and being more selective with large power cluster leases through 2026,” analysts wrote.

Amazon pushed back against the suggestion of a shift, noting how its cloud rivals like Meta, Google, and Oracle are still active in the space. “This is routine capacity management,” AWS data center VP Kevin Miller wrote on LinkedIn. “No fundamental changes to our expansion plans.” Amazon Web Services announced in January that it will spend an additional $11 billion in Georgia on data centers to power its cloud-computing services.

Still, Amazon isn’t the only one trimming back. Last month, Microsoft scrapped data center projects totaling 2 gigawatts of power in the US and Europe, citing oversupply. And in February, Google dropped a $1 billion Texas lease for its data center ops.

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Ford dips as another large fire breaks out at the New York Novelis aluminum plant

Shares of US auto giant Ford are down more than 2% on Thursday morning following reports of another major fire at its primary aluminum supplier’s plant in Oswego County, New York.

Local media reported that a four-alarm fire broke out at the Novelis plant, which supplies 40% of the aluminum sheet for the US auto industry, on Thursday morning.

Last month, Ford said a September fire at the plant would hit its earnings by between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in the fourth quarter. The company said it would be able to mitigate about $1 billion of that next year.

As of 10:15 a.m. ET, local officials said the fire is under control and everyone had been safely evacuated. Novelis previously said it would be able to restart operations at the part of the plant most damaged by the September fire next month.

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