Online retailer and technology giant Amazon said faster delivery speeds for its Prime customers and higher demand for artificial intelligence-fueled cloud computing helped boost first-quarter sales, spurring plans to ramp up investments in those areas.

The Seattle-based company reported a 13% increase in sales to $143.3 billion from $127.4 billion a year earlier, driven by an increase in online orders that it said will lead to added spending after cutting back warehouse and transportation investments in 2023.

Nearly 60% of orders placed through Amazon Prime in the 60 biggest U.S. metropolitan areas in the first quarter reached customers the same or next day — up from the previous high of about 50% in the second quarter of 2023 — due to more direct links between Amazon's fulfillment warehouses and smaller delivery centers.

The company has said it wants to double its number of same-day delivery facilities over the next few years.

“Our stores business continues to expand selection, provide everyday low prices and accelerate delivery speed, setting another record on speed for Prime customers in in the first quarter, while lowering our cost to serve,” CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s first-quarter earnings presentation.

He added that “it’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward.”

Amazon has an estimated 1,363 distribution, fulfillment and other facilities totaling about 435.5 million square feet in the United States, with another 1,176 facilities totaling 188.5 million in other countries around the world, according to supply chain consulting firm MWPVL International.

The company slowed the expansion of its industrial footprint in 2022 and 2023, as it closed, canceled or postponed over 160 buildings, mainly in the United States, to reduce operating expenses, according to MWPV.

Now, the retail giant appears to be back in expansion mode as it looks to double its number of same-day delivery warehouses in the biggest U.S. cities in an effort to reduce costs and leverage its warehouse system as a "core building block" for increasing its grocery and pharmacy business.

Amazon has an estimated 170 facilities planned totaling more than 64 million square feet, including 103 package delivery stations and 35 sorting and fulfillment centers, according to MWPV.

“Amazon has a lot of levers it can pull to reduce expenses and cut loss-making areas,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData. “Management has been highly adept at seeking these out and making the necessary tough choices. The result is a more streamlined, more disciplined and leaner business that, collectively, is pushing far more profit to the bottom line."

Amazon is also investing in its Amazon Web Services cloud-computing division after it posted a $9.4 billion profit in the first quarter.

The company said it plans to expand the division's systems through such moves as a planned investment of $10 billion to build two data centers in Mississippi.

Amazon said the project is targeted to create at least 1,000 jobs and support new educational training.

The cloud computing unit also plans to invest $11 billion to build a data center in northern Indiana that will create at least 1,000 new jobs, state and company officials announced last week.

Gov. Eric Holcomb said in a statement that the project planned near the town of New Carlisle, about 15 miles west of South Bend, is “the largest capital investment announcement in Indiana’s history.”

Amazon Web Services this year also bought a northeast Pennsylvania data center site near a nuclear power plant, a source of carbon-free energy for the digital hub to help the tech giant meet its goal of net-zero emissions by 2040. AWS paid $650 million for the 1,200-acre property in one of the biggest individual U.S. commercial  property sales of the year, according to CoStar data.

Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle spent a combined $160 billion in 2022 to boost their cloud computing power an average of 30% over the past five years, according to Newmark's U.S. data center market report published in January. The spending trajectory, an indicator of data center demand, is likely to continue because of the accelerating pace of AI breakthroughs, according to Newmark.