Amazon to invest 15.7 bn euros in Spain

Amazon's cloud computing division AWS will invest 15.7 billion euros ($17 billion) to expand its data centres in Spain's Aragon region through to 2033, the US tech giant said Wednesday.

The move comes on the heels of its announcement this month of a 7.8 billions euro investment to build a cloud centre 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 centres.

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..