The cloud-computing market keeps growing as companies move an increasing number of workloads out of their own data centers, but executives from the leading cloud vendors said this week that clients are looking for ways to trim costs.
The result is slowing revenue growth at the cloud divisions run by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. And for Amazon Web Services, the leader in the space, it means a slimmer operating margin and less profit for its parent company.
It’s a phenomenon that began in 2022, as fears of a recession hit the economy. AWS saw deceleration in the third and fourth quarters, and last quarter Microsoft finance chief Amy Hood spooked analysts with comments about a slowdown in December that she expected to persist.
Amazon finance chief Brian Olsavsky was the bearer of bad news for investors on Thursday, when he said that in April, AWS revenue growth had slumped by about five percentage points from the first-quarter growth rate of almost 16%. The company’s stock price slid in response.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said “what we’re seeing is enterprises continuing to be cautious in their spending in this uncertain time.”
At Google, cloud growth slowed to 28% from a year earlier in the first quarter from 32% in the prior period. The deceleration occurred even as Google’s cloud segment reached profitability for the first time on record.
“We saw some headwind from slower growth of consumption with customers really looking to optimize their costs given that macro climate,” said Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s finance chief, on Tuesday’s earnings call.
Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, said the slowdown is understandable.
“We are leaning into optimization,” he said. “This is an important moment to help our customers, and we take a long-term view. And so it’s definitely an area we are leaning in and trying to help customers make progress on their efficiencies where we can.”
The companies remain optimistic that cloud will continue to be a strong market for tech, as businesses still have a long way to go before they’ll be fully taking advantage of the benefits.
“People sometimes forget that 90-plus percent of global IT spend is still on-premises,” Jassy said.
And Hood noted that pretty soon the financial comparisons will be against numbers from the point last year when the market was softening.
“When you start to anniversary that, you do see that it gets a little bit easier in terms of the comps year-over-year,” Hood said.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro chastised Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside of China.
“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”
CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment on Navarro’s criticism.
President Donald Trump has in recent months ramped up demands for Apple to move production of its iconic iPhone to the U.S. from overseas. Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has increasingly boosted production in India, partly to avoid the higher cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump in May warned Apple would have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. In separate remarks, Trump said he told Cook, “I don’t want you building in India.”
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Analysts and supply chain experts have argued it would be impossible for Apple to completely move iPhone production to the U.S. By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.
Navarro said Cook isn’t shifting production out of China quickly enough.
“With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country,” Navarro said.
Apple currently makes very few products in the U.S. During Trump’s first term, Apple extended its commitment to assemble the $3,000 Mac Pro in Texas.
In February, Apple said it would spend $500 billion within the U.S., including on assembling some AI servers.
CoreWeave founders Brian Venturo, at left in sweatshirt, and Mike Intrator slap five after ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence hyperscaler CoreWeave said Monday it will acquire Core Scientific, a leading data center infrastructure provider, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $9 billion.
Coreweave stock fell about 4% on Monday while Core Scientific stock plummeted about 20%. Shares of both companies rallied at the end of June after the Wall Street Journal reported that talks were underway for an acquisition.
The deal strengthens CoreWeave’s position in the AI arms race by bringing critical infrastructure in-house.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said the move will eliminate $10 billion in future lease obligations and significantly enhance operating efficiency.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.
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The deal expands CoreWeave’s access to power and real estate, giving it ownership of 1.3 gigawatts of gross capacity across Core Scientific’s U.S. data center footprint, with another gigawatt available for future growth.
Core Scientific has increasingly focused on high-performance compute workloads since emerging from bankruptcy and relisting on the Nasdaq in 2024.
Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each share they hold — implying a $20.40 per-share valuation and a 66% premium to Core Scientific’s closing stock price before deal talks were reported.
After closing, Core Scientific shareholders will own less than 10% of the combined company.
Two young men stand inside a shopping mall in front of a large illuminated Apple logo seen through a window in Chongqing, China, on June 4, 2025.
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Apple on Monday appealed what it called an “unprecedented” 500 million euro ($586 million) fine issued by the European Union for violating the bloc’s Digital Markets Act.
“As our appeal will show, the EC [European Commission] is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users,” the company said in a statement. “We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”
Apple recently made changes to its App Store‘s European policies that the company said would be in compliance with the DMA and would avoid the fines.
The Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, announced its fine in April, saying that Apple “breached its anti-steering obligation” under the DMA with restrictions on the App Store.
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“Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store,” the commission wrote. “Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers.”
Under the DMA, tech giants like Apple and Google are required to allow businesses to inform end-users of offers outside their platform — including those at different prices or with different conditions.
Companies like Epic Games and Spotify have complained about restrictions within the App Store that make it harder for them to communicate alternative payment methods to iOS users.
Apple typically takes a 15%-30% cut on in-app purchases.