The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rosenthal: AWS was built to scale, not to monetize excess seasonal capacity
“The excess capacity story is a myth. It was never a matter of selling excess capacity. Actually, within two months after launch, AWS would have already burned through the excess amazon.com capacity. Amazon Web Services was always considered a business by itsel…”
Meta Built a Hyperscaler-Sized Data Center Footprint Exclusively for Internal Use
“They now last year spent twenty-eight billion dollars in capex, which you should mostly read as data centers. They operate a Hyper-scaler-sized data center footprint, give or take. You know, you think AWS, Azure, Microsoft, and Google Cloud. Meta is the fourth…”
Gilbert: Massive AWS data center investments drove Amazon free cash flow negative
“They just invested so much in building out new data centers for AWS, they actually took Amazon cash flow negative. Their free cash flow is massively negative over the last 12 months because of these continued, unbelievably large investments.”
Gilbert: AWS cut prices 51 times by 2015 without facing competitive pressure
“By 2012, and keep in mind they had very little competition up to this point, they had already done 23 price reductions across the board for all of their services. By 2013, they had done 40. By 2015, they had done 51.”
Rosenthal: Amazon did not finish migrating off Oracle until 2019
“Amazon.com did not finish their migration off of Oracle databases. And onto AWS products. Until 2019.”
Rosenthal: AWS has over $100 billion in contracted revenue backlog
“That backlog of committed contractual signed revenue is over one hundred billion dollars.”
Rosenthal: As of 2022, AWS was on an $80B annualized revenue run rate
“AWS today is on an. Eighty billion dollar revenue run rate eight zero.”
Rosenthal: AWS market share exceeds Google Cloud and Azure combined
“AWS is growing at 37% annually on a seventy five billion dollar base. Google and Microsoft are growing at 45%, but their market share combined is still significantly less than Amazon.”
Cloud instances cost $30 hourly for A100s and $100 hourly for H100s
“You can get access to a DGX server. That's eight A 100 for about 30 bucks an hour, or you can go over to AWS and get a P five dot 48 X large instance, which is eight H 100, which I believe is an HGX server for about a hundred dollars an hour.”
Rosenthal: Only eight people attended Amazon's 2002 AWS launch conference
“They hold a conference for developers in 2002. A total of eight people attend the conference. They announced to the world the launch of this new division within Amazon. That is called Amazon Web Services.”
Rosenthal: Andy Jassy's 2003 AWS vision document requested hiring 57 people
“In the document, there is an ask, a proposal to hire 57 new people to go pursue this initiative.”
Gilbert: AWS operating profit exceeds Amazon retail despite being 15% of revenue
“AWS's revenue is only about 15% the size of Amazon's massive retail business, but their profits, or the operating income, to be specific, from AWS Are in total the same, if not more than their e-commerce store. I think it's the case that every year since 2015,…”
Rosenthal: Amazon originally targeted 20% to 40% margins for AWS
“Amazon targeted gross margins and operating margins for AWS in the 20 to 40% range.”
Rosenthal: Original 2002 AWS was an Associates catalog API, not cloud infrastructure
“This is called Amazon Web Services, but it is not. Cloud-based IT infrastructure. It's other developers using the amazon.com product catalog, and indeed it lives. Amazon Web Services lives within the Amazon Associates program, and that is run by a guy named Co…”