Trump will realize 'Amazon is good for America,' venture capitalist says
After another record-busting holiday season, Amazon is set to speed past any hurdles from the new administration, technology watchers told CNBC.
"Amazon has been on fire," Venky Ganesan, who focuses on consumer and enterprise investments for Menlo Ventures, told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on Wednesday.
"When [President-elect Donald Trump] comes into office and they look at it, they will realize that Amazon is good for America and Amazon's success is good for America," Ganesan said. "You want to make America great and you want to put America first? You do that by supporting innovation and entrepreneurship and job creation, and Amazon does all of those."
Amazon's shares have risen nearly 1,400 percent since president Barack Obama took office in 2009, and hit an all-time high right before the election, as online shopping became ubiquitous.
Being both a dominant channel for e-commerce and a pre-eminent cloud services provider leaves Amazon well-positioned for being the stock of the new administration as well, said Ganesan, who has portfolio companies that sell products on Amazon.
While Amazon's light tax burden has been contested by red and blue states alike, Amazon has long had friends on Pennsylvania Avenue. A former Obama administration staffer has helmed Amazon's global affairs, and Obama had reportedly considered an Amazon distribution center as the site of a tax reform announcement.
Trump, meanwhile, has been critical of Amazon's tax policies, He has also towed a hard line against China, where many Amazon sellers manufacture and trade goods.
"Believe me, if I become president, oh do they have problems," Trump said at a rally in February, though his tax plan actually proposes cutting taxes for large corporations. "They're going to have such problems."
Amazon is also a leader in data science and machine learning, Ganesan said. Evercore ISI analyst Ken Sena gave Amazon as the firm's top internet pick for next year.
"Amazon has shown a greater willingness to essentially take to market a lot of the advances we've seen within cloud," Sena told "Squawk on the Street" on Wednesday. "I think if we look at something like natural language understanding, Google is probably furthest ahead of anyone in that area, but if we look at what Google has offered through Google cloud in that area, it really doesn't stack up to Amazon."
Sena said applying artificial intelligence will make new opportunities for companies like Amazon going forward, and create efficiency like matching supply and demand.
"Whether you're looking at it from the standpoint of sort of near-term practical business implications, or you're thinking longer term, in terms of addressable markets and disruption, I think everyone needs to focus on this area," Sena said.