The results echoed the slowdown at Microsoft and Alphabet-owned Google, and highlighted how U.S. cloud-computing giants were struggling to scale AI as infrastructure bottlenecks cap growth, forcing them to invest billions in data centers with little short-term payoff.

Amazon investors drove shares down sharply on Thursday due to weakness in the retailer’s cloud computing unit and lower-than-expected forecasts for first-quarter revenue and profit. Amazon’s shares fell as much as 5% in extended trade after the fourth-quarter earnings report,

Wall Street’s expectations on fourth-quarter earnings and revenue today, but sales in its all-important cloud computing business came up short, and guidance for the current quarter was light. As a result,