Amazon earnings fall short as retail revenue lags

Amazon missed earnings estimates on Thursday, as less-than-impressive sales growth in its retail division undermined strong cloud-computing revenue.

Though the bulk of Amazon’s $201.9 billion revenue from July through September came from its e-commerce business, the Seattle-based tech giant’s cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services, stole the show in third quarter financial results.

As Amazon jockeys for its place in the artificial intelligence race — spending roughly $220 billion this year to do so — the company is counting on steady revenue growth in AWS to show signs of healthy returns on investment.

AWS reported $46 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 39% increase from the year before, reflecting its fastest growth in five years. Overall, Amazon’s revenue grew by 12%, bringing in $20 billion.

Amazon’s cloud division has long been the company’s primary moneymaker. While it doesn’t bring in the same revenue as the company’s retail side,…