Amazon Urges Court To Halt Progress On Microsoft's JEDI Contract With The Pentagon

Amazon.com Inc AMZN has requested the court to halt Microsoft Corporation's MSFT work with the Pentagon on a $10 billion cloud computing contract until its protest against the award is ruled upon, Reuters reported Wednesday.

What Happened

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud, or the JEDI, contract was awarded to Microsoft in October, after a year-long tussle with three other tech giants, including Amazon, Oracle Corporation ORCL, and IBM IBM.

The e-commerce giant's cloud subsidiary Amazon Web Services was widely considered a front runner for the coveted $10 billion military contract.

"It is common practice to stay contract performance while a protest is pending, and it's important that the numerous evaluation errors and blatant political interference that impacted the JEDI award decision be reviewed." Amazon Web Services, the cloud subsidiary of the e-commerce giant said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Amazon claims that it wasn't awarded the contract due to personal political interference from President Donald Trump, who reportedly asked the Department of Defense to "screw Amazon."

The Pentagon has refuted the allegations, saying the decision to award the contract to Microsoft "was made by an expert team of career public servants and military officers" and not influenced by "external influence."

Price Action

Amazon's shares closed 0.24% lower at $1.887.46 on Wednesday. The shares traded $1.71 lower in the after-hours market.

Microsoft's stock closed 0.48% lower at $165.70 a share and traded 0.11% higher in after-hours.

Photo Credit: Public domain photo via Wikimedia.