Amazon .com forecast quarterly revenue largely below Wall Street estimates on Thursday, hurt by a weaker retail business as strong demand for its cloud services as businesses continue to spend relentlessly on artificial intelligence.

The massive cloud demand is helping the tech company ease the pressure from weaker growth at its e-commerce business, which is gearing up for the holiday season amid weakness in consumer confidence stemming from global trade uncertainty.

The company's shares surged more than 10% in extended trading.

Its cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, reported a 20% rise in revenue in the third quarter ending in September, compared with the estimates of a 17.95% increase.

Amazon projected net sales of between $206 billion and $213.0 billion for the fourth quarter, while

See Full Page