An industrywide power crunch is changing how Amazon runs its e-commerce empire

Amazon is restructuring its e-commerce infrastructure through an internal project called Region Flex to spread workloads across more AWS regions as power and data center capacity tighten industrywide. The initiative aims to reduce reliance on large hubs such as Northern Virginia and Dublin, while improving resilience, proximity to customers, and expansion flexibility. However, the shift may raise operating costs, with some workloads facing 10% to 15% higher infrastructure costs and Amazon estimating about $90 million in one-time spending in 2025. The article underscores that the AI-driven surge in cloud demand has made electricity and data center availability key constraints, and even Amazon expects capacity shortages to persist into 2026 and 2027. For investors, the story signals rising infrastructure capex and potential margin pressure, but also highlights AWS demand strength and the strategic importance of Amazon’s cloud network to sustaining retail and AI growth.