AWS had a rough stretch in 2025. Spending momentum hit its lowest mark since 2010, and the questions were fair: was this a temporary dip, or something more fundamental? The data from ETR's January 2026 Technology Spending Intentions Survey (TSIS) is offering a clearer answer, and within ETR's dataset, it points toward recovery.
The TSIS is conducted quarterly, capturing forward-looking spending intentions for hundreds of publicly traded and private enterprise technology vendors across the global market, providing a gauge on demand for the vendors tracked. Net Score represents the intensity of spend for a vendor, while Pervasion represents how widespread a particular vendor is utilized.
According to ETR's January 2026 TSIS, Net Scores are climbing, AI workloads are accelerating cloud consumption, and the Anthropic partnership is proving to be more than a strategic talking point. AWS is not out of the woods entirely, but within ETR's dataset, the trajectory has shifted.
Key Takeaways
AWS's overall Net Score across all products and respondents hit 44% in the October 2025 TSIS, the lowest mark since 2010 within ETR's data. The January 2026 TSIS tells a different story. Net Score climbed four percentage points to reach 48%, on par with April 2025 levels and down just one percentage point year-over-year. That year-over-year contraction is largely explained by spending indications shifting from Increasing to Flat, not by customers walking away.
Among Global 2000 respondents, which comprise more than a quarter of AWS's respondent base in ETR's survey, the recovery is similarly clear. Net Score moved from 50% in October 2025 to 53% in January 2026, returning to levels seen a year earlier. The rebound holds across both the full respondent base and enterprise-scale organizations within ETR's data, which is what makes it appear cyclical rather than structural.
Cloud Computing tells a similar story within ETR's dataset. AWS's sector Net Score in Cloud Computing also hit a 15-year low in October 2025 but has since recovered by nearly three percentage points survey-over-survey. Some softness persists: year-over-year, spending momentum in Cloud Computing declined most among small organizations in ETR's survey, with notable declines in IT and telecom, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, and Latin American subsamples. Even so, AWS's Pervasion remains among the highest in ETR's Cloud Computing sector coverage, and replacement rates remain very low among respondents, both indicators of durable customer stickiness within ETR's data.
ETR Data: In the January 2026 TSIS, all AWS products show survey-over-survey Net Score growth, but on a year-over-year basis only Amazon Connect in the Contact Center sector, Amazon WorkSpaces in the Virtualization sector, and the Database/Data Warehousing Software sector indicated growth.
Within ETR's survey data, the relationship between cloud computing and AI at AWS is increasingly intertwined. Among ETR respondents, enterprises pursuing large-scale AI experimentation and deployment consistently favor AWS for its breadth of services, rapid implementation timelines, and ready access to compute. That dynamic, as reflected in ETR's data, is reinforcing cloud consumption as AI spending scales rather than displacing it.
AWS continues to rank near the top of the Cloud Computing sector within ETR's research, with strong Pervasion and very low replacement rates among respondents. As AI workloads grow, the cloud infrastructure underneath them appears to grow with them, based on ETR's survey findings.
Within ETR's data, the connection between AWS and Anthropic is one of the more significant dynamics shaping AWS's cloud trajectory. AWS serves as Anthropic's primary cloud provider, and customers access Anthropic Claude's models through Amazon Bedrock, making the growth trajectories of both platforms closely linked in ETR's survey universe.
ETR's shared accounts analysis tracks the degree to which customers of one vendor also appear as customers of another within the TSIS respondent base. That analysis shows the AWS-Anthropic relationship deepening rapidly. Citation overlap of Anthropic within AWS Cloud Computing sector accounts has accelerated sharply in ETR's data: from 5% in January 2024, to 11% in January 2025, to 28% in January 2026. The Shared Net Score within AWS accounts reached 76% among those respondents, a very elevated figure within ETR's coverage that signals strong mutual momentum.
ETR's AI Product Series, which tracks evaluation and adoption trends for AI products across ETR's respondent base, reinforces the picture. Evaluation and utilization rates for Anthropic Claude are growing consistently among respondents, seat counts are expanding, and perceptions of value are strong. That trajectory suggests AWS's cloud business will continue to benefit from Anthropic's rise, based on ETR's data.
ETR Data: A shared accounts analysis of TSIS data shows Anthropic's citation overlap within AWS Cloud Computing sector accounts grew from 5% in January 2024, to 11% in January 2025, to 28% in January 2026, while the Shared Net Score within AWS reached 76%.
AWS's broader AI portfolio tells a more nuanced story within ETR's data. Core platforms like SageMaker and Bedrock are viewed favorably among ETR respondents, and a product stack analysis shows substantial co-occurrence between AWS AI products in ETR's survey base. Respondents using Amazon Nova Titan, for instance, were 130% more likely to also use SageMaker, 84% more likely to use Bedrock, and 111% more likely to use Amazon CloudWatch, suggesting enterprises are coalescing around a suite rather than cherry-picking individual tools.
Amazon Q Business and Q Developer, however, face more scrutiny among ETR respondents. Q Business is seeing growing evaluation interest, with those currently evaluating or piloting the product climbing from 20% in May 2025 to 25% in November 2025. But cost perception has deteriorated sharply within ETR's AI Product Series data. In November 2024, just 13% of respondents said cost outweighed value to some degree. By November 2025, that figure had risen to 33%. Nearly half (46%) say the evaluation experience has shown mixed results, with another 5% seeing limited or no value.
Q Developer shows modest but positive movement in evaluation and rollout rates among respondents, though value perceptions are split evenly between those who say value outweighs cost and those who say the opposite. Amazon CodeGuru remains in early stages within ETR's data, with just 4% having rolled it out, but 40% currently or planning to evaluate. Those already using it report mostly positive sentiments on value.
ETR Data: November 2025 AI Product Series data show that respondents saying the cost of Amazon Q Business outweighed value grew from 13% in November 2024 to 33% in November 2025, while nearly half (46%) report mixed results from their evaluation experience.
One of the more notable elements of AWS's recovery within ETR's dataset is how broad-based it is. The rebound is not confined to cloud infrastructure or AI among ETR respondents. AWS is seeing improved spending momentum in data warehousing and analytics, containers, contact center, and virtualization. Amazon Connect and Amazon WorkSpaces, in particular, showed year-over-year Net Score growth in the January 2026 TSIS.
That breadth matters within ETR's data. A recovery driven by a single sector is more fragile than one showing up across multiple product categories and verticals, and it suggests AWS's enterprise relationships, as reflected in ETR's survey base, run deeper than any one workload category.
Within ETR's January 2026 dataset, the 2025 trough for AWS looks like a pause rather than a pivot. Spending momentum is recovering, AI is accelerating cloud consumption rather than replacing it among ETR respondents, and the Anthropic partnership is translating into measurable customer overlap and elevated shared Net Scores within ETR's data. Execution questions remain, particularly around the value perception of the Q product line, but the broader trajectory within ETR's coverage is one of recovery and diversification.
This article is based on ETR's AWS Vendor Focus Report, January 2026. Use the form below to speak with our team about getting your next free report from ETR.