Technology

Amazon earnings: Cloud growth, holiday outlook and layoffs in focus

Published

17 hours ago

October 30, 2025

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What to expect from Amazon's earnings report as AWS faces pressure from rivals

Amazon is slated to post results for the third quarter after the closing bell Thursday.

Here’s what analysts polled by LSEG are looking for:

Earnings per share: $1.57
Revenue: $177.8 billion

Wall Street is also looking at other key revenue numbers:

Amazon Web Services: $32.42 billion expected
Advertising: $17.34 billion expected

AWS growth will be a major focus for investors once again, as the company faces intensifying pressure from cloud competitors Google and Microsoft, which also reported quarterly results this week.

Revenue at AWS is projected to expand 18.1% year over year, which is about the same growth rate as the second quarter. Google’s cloud revenue accelerated 34% during the third quarter, while Microsoft Azure recorded growth of 40%.

AWS stumbled last week during an extended outage that lasted more than 15 hours, taking down numerous websites as a result. Microsoft experienced outages in its Azure cloud and 365 services on Wednesday, hours before its scheduled earnings release.

The Amazon unit is also battling the perception that it’s missing out on a flurry of highly lucrative artificial intelligence deals for cloud services.

Anthropic and Google deepened their cloud partnership last week in a deal worth tens of billions of dollars, while Meta has inked hefty cloud deals with Google and Oracle in recent months.

Amazon on Wednesday opened its $11 billion AI data center called Project Rainier, which was first announced last December and is intended to train and run models from Claude chatbot creator Anthropic.

Amazon, which has invested $8 billion in Anthropic, said the startup will use 1 million of its custom Trainium2 chips by the end of 2025.

During last quarter’s earnings conference call, investors grilled Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on AWS growth and AI competition.

Jassy reiterated AWS has a “pretty significant” leadership position in cloud market share, while noting that it’s still “early” days in the AI industry that remains “very top heavy” with a “small number of very large frontier models.”

Disney content to go dark on YouTubeTV after contract talks collapse

Published

4 hours ago

October 31, 2025

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Disney content to go dark on YouTubeTV after contract talks collapse

Photo illustration of the YouTube TV logo displayed on a smartphone, with the YouTube logo in the background.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Content from The Walt Disney Company, including channels like ABC and ESPN, was removed from Google‘s YouTube TV on Thursday after the two companies failed to renew a streaming contract.

“Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to reach a fair deal, and starting today, Disney programming will not be available on YouTube TV,” the platform said in a statement Thursday.

More than 20 channels, including ABC and ESPN, and Disney content recordings would be removed from YouTube TV, the company said.

The two sides had been engaged in negotiations but were unable to reach a new distribution agreement before their existing contract expired Oct. 30 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.

Disney did not immediately respond to a request for further comment. The mass media and entertainment conglomerate was the first to warn about the potential content removal last week.

In a Thursday statement on its official blog, YouTube argued Disney had “used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers,” and that Disney was now following through on that threat.

“We will not agree to terms that disadvantage our members while benefiting Disney’s own live TV products,” YouTube TV said in a post on its help center webpage. Disney’s live TV offerings include Hulu + Live TV and Fubo.

“We know how disruptive it is to lose channels you enjoy, and we’re committed to continuing to work with Disney to reach an agreement,” YouTube said in its statement, adding that if the content is unavailable for an extended period of time, the company will offer members a $20 credit.

YouTube TV pays broadcasters to stream their channels and has been engaged in several tense negotiations over contract renewals in recent months.

Last month, content was nearly removed from YouTube TV before the companies reached an agreement after a temporary extension, preventing shows like “Sunday Night Football” and “America’s Got Talent” from being pulled.

The recent clash between Disney and YouTube has an added twist, after YouTube hired former Disney distribution executive Justin Connolly earlier this year, prompting Disney to file a breach-of-contract lawsuit.

Connolly has recused himself from the discussions, CNBC previously reported, according to the people familiar with the process.

YouTube is the top U.S. media distributor by audience engagement, capturing over 13% of TV watch-time in July, according to Nielsen. It is also on track to be the biggest media company by revenue in 2025, beating Disney, analysts at MoffettNathanson told CNBC.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant.

Technology

Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

Published

7 hours ago

October 31, 2025

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

Technology

SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

Published

8 hours ago

October 31, 2025

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

SpaceX’s Starship rocket 38 launches during the 11th test flight on October 13, 2025 as seen from South Padre Island in Texas.

Gabriel V. Cardenas | Afp | Getty Images

SpaceX said it has pitched NASA a “simplified mission” to put astronauts back on the moon following criticisms over delays by Sean Duffy, the space agency’s acting administrator.

In a company blog post out Thursday, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor said: “We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.”

Earlier this month, Duffy said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, that SpaceX was behind schedule on building its lunar landing system for NASA’s Artemis III mission and that the agency would reopen the landing contract for that mission to competitors such as Jeff Bezos‘ rocket maker Blue Origin.

A NASA spokesperson in an email to CNBC said that the agency “has received and is evaluating plans from both SpaceX and Blue Origin for acceleration of HLS production.”

“Following the shutdown, the agency will issue an RFI to the broader aerospace industry for their proposals,” the spokesperson said. “A committee of NASA subject matter experts is being assembled to evaluate each proposal and determine the best path forward to win the second space race given the urgency of adversarial threats to peace and transparency on the Moon.”

NASA had previously said that SpaceX and Blue Origin would have until Oct. 29th to propose new ways to speed up the project.

Musk initially responded to Duffy by posting to his social network X, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!” In another post, Musk wrote: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

SpaceX’s massive Starship has flown 11 test flights so far, uncrewed. The last two flights were deemed successful, but the company has not yet shown all the in-orbit refueling capabilities it requires before embarking on the Artemis III, manned lunar mission.

Blue Origin has been developing a lunar lander for NASA and has received about $835 million from the space agency since their contract began in 2023. The company plans to launch a smaller scale version of their lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1.

Meanwhile, China is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.

In September, in an all-hands meetings with NASA employees, Duffy told his staff that he was irked by “shade thrown” on the space agency at a Senate hearing in which some attendees doubted that the U.S. could put astronauts back on the Moon before China could land its astronauts there.

Besides its lunar mission, China also announced it is sending a new crew to its orbiting lab, the Tiangong space station, this week. China built this space station after it was excluded from access to the International Space Station due to U.S. national security concerns.

SpaceX is paid when it achieves different milestones under its NASA contract for the HLS (human landing system integrated lander).

According to USA Spending, which tracks federal contracts, NASA has already paid approximately $2.7 billion to SpaceX for the “design, development, manufacture, test, launch, demonstration and engineering support” of the HLS. The agency is obligated to pay around another $300 million for milestones SpaceX achieved, and Musk’s company stands to earn a total of $4.5 billion (or another $1.5 billion) from the HLS contract if they achieve all milestones.

SpaceX today said, in their company blog post, that they “self-funded” 90% or more of the program, which would imply they have spent over $30 billion already.

As CNBC previously reported, some NASA employees have been required to work without pay for the space agency during the federal government shutdown if their jobs support Artemis missions.

SpaceX and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.