Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review

Amazon will invest 15.7 bln euros in Spain

Amazon’s cloud computing division AWS will invest 15.7 billion euros ($17 billion) to expand its data centers in Spain’s Aragon region through to 2033, the U.S. tech giant has said.

The move comes on the heels of its announceme­nt this month of a 7.8 billion euro investment to build a cloud center in Germany, and 1.2 billion euros in France to develop cloud infrastruc­ture and logistical infrastruc­ture of its parcel delivery service.

Amazon in 2021 had planned to invest 2.5 billion euros in Aragon, where it has three data centers.

The U.S. company said its investment will create around 17,500 indirect jobs in local companies in the northwest region.

“This new commitment by AWS spotlights our country’s attractive­ness as a strategic tech hub in southern Europe,” Spanish Digital Transforma­tion Minister Jose Luis Escriva was quoted by Amazon in the statement.

The head of the regional government, Jorge Azcon, said this will be the largest investment from a company in Aragon’s history.

“An investment that positions Aragon as a leading technologi­cal hub on a continenta­l and global level,” he added in a message on social network X, formerly Twitter.

A pioneer of e-commerce, Amazon’s AWS also dominates cloud computing with 31 percent of the market at the end of 2023, according to Stocklytic­s.

But rivals Microsoft and Google are gaining ground, with 24 percent and 11 percent market share of the cloud business, respective­ly.

The race has become particular­ly heated since the deployment of ChatGPT-style artificial intelligen­ce that the cloud companies are offering to clients.