Amazon (AMZN +0.55%) stock has bounced off its 52-week low but remains a ways off from its all-time high of $278 a share. The company has had quite a turbulent past couple of years. The e-commerce giant has navigated tariff drama and fluctuating consumer sentiment. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) is boosting Amazon's cloud business, but those tailwinds have come with soaring capital expenditures.
Despite these bumps in the road, e-commerce and AI remain central growth engines for Amazon. Here's why Amazon is probably the best growth stock you can buy in July.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Amazon turns in a solid Prime Day Most people who shop on Amazon know about Prime Day, the company's annual flagship summer retail event. Prime Day is important for Amazon's e-commerce business and a litmus test for consumer spending across the economy.
According to data from Adobe, U.S. e-commerce spending clocked in at $26.4 billion during the Prime Day event, from June 23 to June 26. That's a 9.3% increase versus a year ago, and puts the Prime Day event on a similar footing with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. Americans spent $32.45 billion online across those holidays in 2025.
The strong online spending data signals a successful Prime Day for Amazon, which needs healthy e-commerce volume to drive efficiency in its supply chain. Additionally, consumers need an Amazon Prime membership to participate in Prime Day sales, which is another strong indicator of Amazon's lucrative Prime membership ecosystem, which has over 180 million members in the United States.
AI upside makes Amazon a compelling buy now Amazon is in a somewhat unique position to capitalize on AI. Of course, there's AWS, Amazon's cloud computing ecosystem. The company's close ties with Anthropic are helping drive continued cloud growth, which clocked in at 28% in the first quarter, putting quarterly revenue at $37.6 billion. Amazon's entrenched cloud relationships with enterprise customers make cross-selling agentic AI and other AI technology a no-brainer.
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Additionally, AI could revolutionize e-commerce, which has historically relied on human workers to pick and pack orders and deliver packages to consumers. Humanoid robots and other physical AI innovations could replace hundreds of thousands of humans, a game changer for Amazon's e-commerce profit margins.
The stock is middling within its 52-week range, but a strong growth outlook makes Amazon stock a table-pounding buy. Wall Street analysts estimate that Amazon will grow its earnings by an average of 17% annually over the next three to five years. That's more than enough growth to justify buying one of the world's most dominant companies at 27 times its 2026 earnings estimates.
There might be cheaper stocks out there, but Amazon's combination of quality, future potential, and valuation is difficult to top right now.
Justin Pope has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe and Amazon. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2028 $330 calls on Adobe and short January 2028 $340 calls on Adobe. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
More than a decade ago, before we were talking about "AI agents," Amazon launched its digital voice assistant Alexa and the smart speaker branded Echo.
I remember using one and thinking there was definitely a future here for these kinds of devices. Fast forward to now, with huge leaps in AI models, Alexa has received an upgrade and Amazon is thinking about a world where its voice assistant can be with you everywhere.
Driving the current gadget and AI push is Amazon's hardware and services chief, Panos Panay, who's the latest guest on The Tech Download.
Panay laid out his vision of Alexa+, the latest souped up AI version of Alexa. The idea is this assistant will learn about your life, with context and carry out tasks.
"Now it's more contextual. You just say what you're thinking and your assistant is there to help you through the day and help you do what you want to do," Panay said.
Amazon's foray into devices has seen it jump into speakers, doorbells and now wearables with its acquisition of Bee, a startup developing a wristband device. Alexa is at the heart of tying all of those together in a world where "we might be moving away from a world of apps and screens," Panay said.
The smartphone has been at the center of our digital life for so long. Now with more advanced AI, what if a screen isn't needed and instead you could do more with voice? This is what Amazon, along with other device companies are thinking about. What the best future gadgets look like is still up for debate. But Amazon is certainly cooking a few things up.
"I have a lab full of devices," Panay said, adding that there is a "whole roadmap of on-the-go devices."
My final big takeaway from the conversation was about semiconductors. For those of you who know me, you know chips are one of my favorite topics. For the first time publicly, Panay discussed Amazon's semiconductor efforts for its consumer electronics.
"On some of the more critical devices right now, our focus is end-to-end silicon," Panay said.
This means that Amazon is designing the chips that go into its devices. It's right out of the Apple playbook. By having more control over the hardware and software integration, Amazon will be able to deliver more differentiated experiences around Alexa.
There is so much more to unpack in the podcast. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.
Latest updatesAutonomous defense startup Quantum Systems raised $1.2 billion in a Series D funding round, the company announced on Thursday, giving it a valuation of around $8 billion on a post-money basis.
Europe's top court on Thursday upheld Google's fine of around 4.1 billion euros ($4.67 billion) over alleged anti-competitive practices.
Anthropic said on Tuesday that U.S. export controls on its Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models had been lifted, ending the latest dramatic standoff between the AI company and the Trump administration.
OpenAI, Anthropic backer MGX announced on Wednesday it had raised one of the biggest AI funds ever as it closes at $49 billion.
Trump bought Apple, Nvidia and other tech giants before tariff reversal fueled rebound, according to a CNBC analysis.
Stock of the week
Tesla stock.
Tesla stock sank on Thursday despite the automaker reporting vehicle deliveries and production levels for the second quarter that far exceeded Wall Street expectations.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Google and Amazon this week reported sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions, driven by the frantic construction of artificial intelligence infrastructure that is pushing the tech giants further from their carbon-neutrality pledges.
Google's total emissions, disclosed Tuesday, have jumped 82% since 2019, and more than 18% just last year, even though it has committed to cutting them in half by 2030.
Amazon's emissions, published Wednesday, have risen 58% over the same period, and more than 16% last year, despite a pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2040.
Another sign that the problem is getting worse: Both companies now pollute more for every dollar they generate in revenue.
In other words, their emissions are rising faster than their sales—a first since at least 2021 for Amazon.
"Our AI infrastructure buildout is currently accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing," Kate Brandt, Google's chief sustainability officer, said in a blog post announcing the company's annual environmental report.
Her counterpart at Amazon, Kara Hurst, likewise said in the e-commerce giant's own report that demand for AI products could "slow us down" when it comes to the company's environmental ambitions.
In total, Google emitted 18.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent last year, which comes partly from its data centers and offices but primarily from its supply chain for chip and server manufacturing and the construction of new centers by its suppliers.
Amazon emitted 80.85 million tonnes from the same cloud computing activities, plus its warehouses, logistics fleet and deliveries around the world.
"One thing we can count on with companies is that they will pursue profits," Sytske Wijnsma, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley's graduate school of business, told AFP. Her research is focused on supply chain sustainability, particularly the growing demand for critical minerals.
On the one hand, that creates an incentive for corporations to cut their operational costs, like energy.
Companies will invest in more sustainable options if it reduces costs, Wijnsma said, which can be "a win-win" for them and the environment.
The bigger issue, she continued, is their supply chains, which they don't directly control.
"They need to find a way to fill that gap between the demand and the supply" of resources, like energy and critical minerals, Wijnsma said. "The gap can be filled by making your chips and data centers more efficient" or by tapping into more readily available options like fossil fuels.
A global effort Earlier this month, a United Nations report found that data centers worldwide use so much energy that only 10 countries each consume more, making AI the 11th-largest energy consumer globally.
By 2030, AI data centers are expected to become the sixth-largest energy user around the world.
"It is time to come clean," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a speech June 23 during London Climate Week. "If AI is to help build a better future, it must be honest about what it costs us now."
Guterres launched an AI Environmental Transparency Initiative and urged every major AI company to measure and publicly disclose its environmental impact, as well as commit to powering every data center with renewable energy by 2030.
The issue affects the entire sector, including Meta and Microsoft, which are expected to publish their own reports soon.
The global AI race, which accelerated after the meteoric launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, is pushing tech giants to multiply data centers—facilities that consume large amounts of electricity, water for cooling, concrete, steel and chips.
Google's electricity consumption has doubled in three years and nearly matches that of a country like Greece. Amazon's emissions linked to the construction of data centers have soared by more than 40% in a single year.
In their voluminous annual reports, both companies tout their efforts.
Google says it signed a record volume of "clean" electricity contracts last year and invests in nuclear and geothermal power.
Amazon, for its part, presents itself as the world's largest buyer of renewable energy for the sixth year in a row, invests in small nuclear reactors, and claims to have more than 52,000 electric trucks.
Who's behind this story?
Alexander Pol PhD nano-engineering from Delft University. Published researcher and journal reviewer. Brings scientific insight to content standards. Full profile →
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Známý investor Jeremy Grantham dokázal podle CNBC rozpoznat už několik investičních bublin. Současnému dění je podle něj nejvíce podobná situace kolem roku 2000. Podle některých měřítek „jde nyní o nejdražší akciový trh v celé jeho historii“. Znamená to, že brzy přijde nějaká korekce?
Grantham na uvedenou otázku odpověděl, že „načasování je vždy velmi nejisté“. On sám se však domnívá, že nastane „návrat k dlouhodobému trendu“. Obecně přitom považuje trhy za neefektivní, rozhodující roli na nich hrají behaviorální faktory. A není radno věřit „býčí propagandě“. Připomněl i to, že v roce 2000 predikoval 70% oslabení trhu Nasdaq a o poklesu podobnému těmto proporcím hovoří i nyní.
Na otázku týkající se vývoje po roce 2010 investor odpověděl, že v té době byly poměry cen akcií k ziskům na akcii výrazně nad průměrem předchozích sto let. To podle něj ukazuje, že trh byl už tehdy drahý, ale nutně to neznamená, že přijde kolaps. K novým technologiím a umělé inteligenci pak řekl, že významné nové objevy a vynálezy v minulosti vedly k velkému pokroku a změnám. Doprovázel je ale také investiční boom, který následně splaskl. A pak tyto nové technologie „změnily svět“.
Umělá inteligence je podle Granthama „evidentně zářná myšlenka, což vidí všichni, a tak do ní všichni chtějí dát své peníze.“ Výsledkem tedy bude podobný investiční boom jako třeba v době rozmachu železnic nebo internetu. Boom, který splaskne, i když nová myšlenka přinese reálné přínosy a výsledky. Investor v této souvislosti připomněl akcie společnosti Amazon, které do vrcholu internetové bubliny znatelně posílily, pak ale ztratily 92 %. Grantham také připomněl investice do optických vláken, které „kolem roku 2000 všechny zruinovaly, ale pak je všichni využívali.“
V souvislosti s minulými investičními boomy a konkrétně s investicemi do optických vláken Granhtam dodal, že tato vlákna a z nich vybudované telekomunikační soustavy vydrží fungovat velmi dlouho. To podle investora neplatí o „dnešních čipech“. Existuje tedy velký rozdíl v tom, jak dlouhodobě využitelné byly výsledky předchozích bublin a té současné. Následující obrázek ukazuje pohyb peněz směrem k americkému technologickému sektoru. Jde o čtyřtýdenní plovoucí průměr, který popisuje, jak prudce v posledních týdnech vzrostl zájem investorů o tento sektor:
Zdroj: CNBC
Tagy: investice, strategie, akcie, bublina, trhy
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Amazon has enough satellites in orbit to begin rolling out Amazon Leo, the company’s broadband service, Bloomberg reported Thursday (July 2).
The company gained another 29 satellites, bringing the total deployment to more than 390, when a United Launch Alliance rocket delivered them into orbit, according to the report.
The report cited a post on X in which Chris Weber, vice president of business and product for Amazon Leo, said the satellite deployment means that Amazon has “completed enough launches for initial service” this year.
“Still lots of work ahead — including raising all these new satellites to their assigned altitude — but we’ve completed enough launches for initial service this [year], and future missions just add coverage and capacity,” Weber said in the post.
Amazon Leo was formerly known as Project Kuiper. The company changed its name about seven months ago while retaining the same mission, it said at the time in a post on LinkedIn.
“Follow along as we prepare to deliver fast, reliable internet beyond the reach of existing networks,” the company said in the post.
Amazon announced in October 2023 that it launched the first prototypes for its Project Kuiper satellite internet system and was moving forward in its plan to create a global satellite internet network.
In April, the company said it plans to expand the capabilities of Amazon Leo by acquiring mobile satellite services operator Globalstar.
United Launch Alliance announced the latest launch in a Thursday press release and said it has delivered 224 of the more than 375 satellites Amazon Leo has in place.
Amazon said in a Thursday press release that Amazon Leo began full-scale deployment of its satellite constellation in April 2025 and now has the third-largest constellation in orbit.
Melissa Wuerl, director of launch systems for Amazon Leo, said in the release: “With hundreds of flight-ready satellites standing by at the Cape and a new, dedicated vertical integration facility ready to support Leo Vulcan 1 and subsequent missions, we have a clear path to increase launch and deployment cadence, helping us quickly expand network coverage following an initial service rollout later this year.”
Amazon's head of devices and services discussed the company's focus on artificial intelligence, Alexa Plus and new types of technology to support it.
Tyler has worked on, lived with and tested all types of smart home and security technology for over a dozen years, explaining the latest features, privacy tricks, and top recommendations. With degrees in Business Management, Literature and Technical Writing, Tyler takes every opportunity to play with the latest AI technology, push smart devices to their limits and occasionally throw cameras off his roof, all to find the best devices to trust in your life. He always checks with the renters (and pets) in his life to see what smart products can work for everyone, in every living situation. Living in beautiful Bend, Oregon gives Tyler plenty of opportunities to test the latest tech in every kind of weather and temperature. But when not at work, he can be found hiking the trails, trying out a new food recipe for his loved ones, keeping up on his favorite reading, or gaming with good friends.
Expertise Smart home | Smart security | Home tech | Energy savings | A/V
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On Thursday, Amazon's head of devices and services, Panos Panay, discussed the future of Amazon's smart devices with CNBC, which includes the company's own end-to-end silicon chips. In the interview, Panoy also revealed plans for future AI devices and its advanced Alexa Plus AI assistant.
That Amazon-only design, currently in AZ3 and AZ3 Pro chips, is in devices I've tested, like the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11 (now in my kitchen), as well as the Fire TV. Panay says more devices are on the way.
The latest chips are designed to run as much AI on-device as possible, improving response times and generally making it more secure than relying on cloud processing.
"If we're going to go deliver this ambient experience in the home for people in the most secure way, we definitely need to think about how that end-to-end delivery of hardware comes together," Panay said, although he added that Amazon is still using Qualcomm chips for other purposes.
This may also give Amazon more control over device pricing. While computer chips aren't facing quite the same AI-related cost leaps as graphics processing units -- something CNET has termed RAMageddon -- prices are still rising. Keeping the manufacturing process mostly in-house could help Amazon dictate consumer prices with more discretion.
An Amazon representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon's chips are only the start of a new focus on AI Alexa Plus can do a lot, but now Amazon wants it to be on the go.
Tyler Lacoma/Zooey Liao/CNETWhy the new focus on end-to-end chip design? According to Panay, it comes down to improving security and AI, especially its Alexa Plus capabilities. Alexa Plus is the latest version of Amazon's voice assistant (free with Amazon Prime, $20 for most capabilities otherwise), built with conversational AI.
I've used it to talk through recipes, to change its own settings, to create automatic conversations for my doorbell, to order GrubHub and for plenty more, but Amazon is just getting started.
"I think we might be moving away from a world of apps and screens," Panay said to CNBC, underlining Amazon's focus on the voice assistant. He said Amazon has a lab full of devices it's testing, including a "whole roadmap of on-the-go devices." That would explain Amazon's purchase of wearables brand Bee in 2025.
What those mobile Alexa Plus devices look like remains to be seen, but according to Amazon, we won't have to wait long. We've already seen devices like AI pins that can listen to your daily conversations and take notes on them, but they haven't been especially useful and have raised privacy questions about what this technology listens to.
Speaking of privacy, it's worth noting that Amazon automatically processes voice commands given to devices like the Echo Show 11 for analysis, and while you can turn other Alexa settings off, you can't adjust that one.
This new wave of AI devices is likely to come with similar requirements, so think about how much you want Amazon to know about you.
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TYLER LACOMA
Editor / Home Security and Smart Home
Tyler has worked on, lived with and tested all types of smart home and security technology for over a dozen years, explaining the latest features, privacy tricks, and top recommendations. With degrees in Business Management, Literature and Technical Writing, Tyler takes every opportunity to play with the latest AI technology, push smart devices to their limits and occasionally throw cameras off his roof, all to find the best devices to trust in your life. He always checks with the renters (and pets) in his life to see what smart products can work for everyone, in every living situation. Living in beautiful Bend, Oregon gives Tyler plenty of opportunities to test the latest tech in every kind of weather and temperature. But when not at work, he can be found hiking the trails, trying out a new food recipe for his loved ones, keeping up on his favorite reading, or gaming with good friends. See full bio
Of all the companies with something to lose from this week's report that Meta Platforms (META 4.80%) wants to enter cloud computing, Amazon (AMZN +0.55%) would seem to top the list. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's largest cloud provider, and it supplies the majority of Amazon's profits.
The report, from Bloomberg on Wednesday, said Meta is designing a cloud service that would rent out its artificial intelligence (AI) computing power and let customers use AI models running on its infrastructure -- a business that would compete with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud. Meta hasn't confirmed any of it, and the report noted the plans could still change.
But the market's reaction was telling. While Meta's stock jumped on the news, Amazon shares actually rose modestly on Wednesday, closing at $241.70. So how exposed is AWS, and is Amazon stock still a buy at about $242?
Image source: Getty Images.
Amazon's profit engine is accelerating Whatever threat a Meta cloud may eventually pose, it's arriving at a moment when AWS has rarely looked stronger. In the first quarter of 2026, AWS revenue grew 28% year over year to $37.6 billion.
"AWS is growing 28% (our fastest growth in 15 quarters) on a very large base," said CEO Andy Jassy in the company's first-quarter earnings release. He also noted that Amazon's in-house chip business topped a $20 billion revenue run rate, growing at a triple-digit year-over-year rate.
AWS matters even more to profits than to sales. The segment produced $14.2 billion in operating income during the quarter -- nearly 60% of Amazon's $23.9 billion total -- despite accounting for only about a fifth of the company's $181.5 billion in net sales, which themselves grew 17% year over year.
And here's the detail that says the most about the state of cloud demand: Amazon's free cash flow for the trailing 12 months fell to just $1.2 billion, as purchases of property and equipment rose $59.3 billion year over year, primarily reflecting investments in AI. Amazon is effectively reinvesting everything it earns into new capacity. A company worried about a glut of AI computing wouldn't be racing to build more of it.
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What a Meta cloud would -- and wouldn't -- threaten Now consider what Meta is reportedly planning to sell: raw computing capacity, in the style of specialist providers such as CoreWeave (CRWV 4.58%), or access to AI models hosted on Meta's systems. Both target the newest, most commodity-like layer of the cloud market -- renting out computing power.
AWS's dominance rests on much more than that. Enterprises run their databases, applications, security, and analytics on AWS, often after multiyear migrations, and those workloads are notoriously difficult to move. Meta would be entering as a newcomer selling the one thing cloud customers can already buy from many vendors -- computing capacity -- without the deep catalog of software services, security tools, and enterprise relationships AWS has accumulated since 2006. Even in an optimistic scenario, a Meta cloud would likely spend years competing mainly with the specialist AI-capacity providers, not with the full-service platforms.
That doesn't mean Amazon investors can ignore the report. It signals that a massive new supply of AI computing could eventually come to market. If tech giants collectively overbuild, pricing power across the industry could weaken later this decade -- and Amazon's own heavy spending would look riskier in that world.
For now, though, the numbers favor the incumbent. Management guided for second-quarter net sales growth of 16% to 19%, suggesting momentum is holding. And at about $242 per share as of this writing, Amazon trades at about 32 times earnings -- though it's worth noting recent earnings got a boost from gains on the company's investments in AI firm Anthropic.
That's not a bargain multiple, but it's a reasonable one for a company compounding this quickly with its most profitable segment accelerating. Overall, I think Amazon stock remains a buy. A reported competitor with no announced product, no customers, and no enterprise track record isn't a reason to sell the company that defined the industry -- it's a reminder of how valuable the business Meta wants to copy has become.
Shares of Amazon (AMZN +0.55%) have nearly doubled since the company's 20-for-1 stock split in 2022. The split made the share price more affordable for more investors, but it wasn't the reason for the stock's climb. Amazon made its retail business more efficient, boosted margins, and continued to grow its cloud business. The more important point for investors today isn't what the stock has already done, but where it's headed next.
The clearest reason the stock looks like an even better buy now is Amazon's rapidly expanding AI infrastructure capabilities. Operating cash flow has climbed to record levels over the past year, giving the company more internally generated capital to fund its next leg of growth.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Amazon's most profitable business is on fire While the retail business has become more efficient thanks to robotics and cost-control initiatives, the main catalyst for long-term growth is Amazon Web Services (AWS). The cloud business is seeing strong revenue growth and accounts for most of Amazon's operating profit.
Across retail, cloud, and other services, Amazon generated $148 billion in trailing 12-month operating cash flow (cash from operations). This level of cash generation is a competitive advantage in AI. Training and deploying models requires massive investment in data centers, networking, and specialized chips. Amazon's investment in chips is already becoming a large business in its own right.
Within AWS, Amazon's Trainium AI accelerators and Graviton central processing units (CPUs) are now generating more than $20 billion in annualized revenue. Enterprises are increasingly seeking cost-efficient compute, and custom chips can materially reduce the cost of running AI workloads at scale. Amazon says it has more than $225 billion in commitments tied to Trainium usage from major AI players, including Anthropic and OpenAI.
This momentum points to enormous upside in Amazon's most profitable business. AWS revenue grew 28% year over year in the first quarter. On a trailing 12-month basis, this segment alone now generates $137 billion in revenue and $48 billion in operating income.
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Why the stock is a better buy than in 2022 Free cash flow is down because Amazon is spending aggressively on AWS capacity -- a common cash sink in this era of massive AI data center builds. That's exactly why cash from operations (CFO) is a more useful metric for valuing the stock right now -- it better reflects the business's earning power while investment ramps up.
On a per-share basis, the stock trades at about 18 times CFO, cheaper than at the time of the 2022 stock split, when it traded at 32 times. Given Amazon's stronger profitability, higher cash generation, and much deeper AI capabilities today, the stock looks more attractive now than it did just after the split.
Amazon has enough satellites in orbit to begin rolling out Amazon Leo, the company’s broadband service, Bloomberg reported Thursday (July 2).
The company gained another 29 satellites, bringing the total deployment to more than 390, when a United Launch Alliance rocket delivered them into orbit, according to the report.
The report cited a post on X in which Chris Weber, vice president of business and product for Amazon Leo, said the satellite deployment means that Amazon has “completed enough launches for initial service” this year.
“Still lots of work ahead — including raising all these new satellites to their assigned altitude — but we’ve completed enough launches for initial service this [year], and future missions just add coverage and capacity,” Weber said in the post.
Amazon Leo was formerly known as Project Kuiper. The company changed its name about seven months ago while retaining the same mission, it said at the time in a post on LinkedIn.
“Follow along as we prepare to deliver fast, reliable internet beyond the reach of existing networks,” the company said in the post.
Amazon announced in October 2023 that it launched the first prototypes for its Project Kuiper satellite internet system and was moving forward in its plan to create a global satellite internet network.
In April, the company said it plans to expand the capabilities of Amazon Leo by acquiring mobile satellite services operator Globalstar.
United Launch Alliance announced the latest launch in a Thursday press release and said it has delivered 224 of the more than 375 satellites Amazon Leo has in place.
Amazon said in a Thursday press release that Amazon Leo began full-scale deployment of its satellite constellation in April 2025 and now has the third-largest constellation in orbit.
Melissa Wuerl, director of launch systems for Amazon Leo, said in the release: “With hundreds of flight-ready satellites standing by at the Cape and a new, dedicated vertical integration facility ready to support Leo Vulcan 1 and subsequent missions, we have a clear path to increase launch and deployment cadence, helping us quickly expand network coverage following an initial service rollout later this year.”
It’s no secret that AI is a hog, consuming energy and water like no digital technology before it. Now we know just how much Big Tech’s pursuit of AI is costing the environment.
Both Google and Amazon released their sustainability reports this week, and the numbers aren’t pretty. Each company has pledged to zero-out its carbon emissions in the coming years, but AI has made those goals a lot harder to hit. Google’s total carbon emissions are up 25% since last year, Amazon’s are up 16%.
A close reading of the reports suggests that both Amazon and Google will have to make some serious, and potentially costly, adjustments to their businesses if they’re going to achieve their net-zero targets.
Neither company comes out and blames AI directly for the rising emissions, but there’s plenty of indirect evidence.
AI at the center of it all Both Amazon and Google acknowledge their energy use has increased significantly in the last year as use of AI has risen. Both talk about carbon intensity — essentially, how much pollution a company generates for every dollar of revenue it brings in — a metric China has used over the last several years when negotiating climate treaties even as its emissions were skyrocketing. And both devote several pages touting how AI can benefit the environment, a case of “protesting too much,” to borrow some Shakespeare.
The picture gets clearer the deeper you dig into the data. Both companies are actually doing OK when it comes to carbon pollution from energy purchases. Years of buying renewable power have helped keep a lid on things, though that may change in the near future as tech companies, including Google, have begun to invest heavily in natural gas power plants to keep pace with AI’s power demands.
Rather, most of Amazon’s and Google’s growing carbon footprint comes from so-called Scope 3 emissions — a catch-all category covering pollution a company doesn’t directly control, like the goods and services it buys or the products it sells. For companies like Amazon and Google, Scope 3 includes things like GPU purchases and the use of a company’s products, like phones and tablets.
Google lumps together two categories of Scope 3 emissions — capital goods and use of sold products —though it admits the latter is small enough to not be material. (Most of Google’s hardware products are small devices that don’t consume a lot of electricity.) That likely leaves data centers as the main driver. Last year, Google’s Scope 3 emissions increased by 2.1 million metric tons, which means they’re now double what they were in 2019, the year Google uses as its baseline when assessing its performance.
Amazon’s rising Scope 3 emissions mostly come from capital goods and fuel and energy. The former can include data centers and warehouses, which can help explain why Amazon’s Scope 3 emissions spiked higher than Google’s. Still, a good chunk is probably data centers. “To meet strong customer demand, in 2025 we added more data center capacity globally than any other company, including more than 1.2 gigawatt (GW) in Q4 alone,” Amazon wrote in the report.
Hitting a wall That kind of spending helps explain why decarbonization is suddenly getting so much harder. For years, the biggest contributor to their carbon footprints was energy for offices and more modestly sized data centers. That could easily be canceled out buying renewable power.
AI has upended that approach. While tech companies could still use renewables plus batteries to power their data centers, they’re starting to fall back on fossil fuels. It’s a trend that will make their net-zero pledges that much harder to deliver, but it’s not irreversible.
The more pernicious emissions come from the construction and outfitting of data centers themselves. The steel and cement industries are both heavy polluters, and while startups are working on low-to-zero carbon approaches, they’re still not ready to deliver at the scale that tech companies need.
Then there are the GPUs and memory chips powering the AI boom. Semiconductor manufacturing uses lots of energy, and many of the world’s leading-edge chip factories are located in Asia, where the electrical grids remain dominated by fossil fuels. Making matters worse, many of the chemicals used in those factories are also potent greenhouse gases, capable of warming the atmosphere thousands of times more than an equivalent amount of CO2. The bingeing on chips has probably inflated both Amazon’s and Google’s carbon footprints.
None of these problems are intractable, though Amazon, Google, and their peers have their work cut out for them. To deliver on their net-zero pledges, they’ll need to ramp up their renewable energy purchases, invest heavily in advanced steel and cement manufacturing, and buy many millions of tons of carbon removal credits. It’s still possible, but their embrace of AI hasn’t made it any easier.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Tim De Chant is a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, where he was founding editor.
De Chant is also a lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, and he was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which time he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA degree in environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College.
You can contact or verify outreach from Tim by emailing [email protected].
Governments are spending more on defense. Satellite launches continue setting records. Demand for broadband, Earth observation, navigation, and space-based communications continues to grow, as industry forecasts routinely project that the global space economy will surpass $1 trillion annually by 2034, up from roughly $626 billion today.
These data points all affirm that the long-term case for the space economy is solid.
But a growing industry doesn't automatically make it a good investment.
Image source: Getty Images.
Valuations matter The market has a habit of getting ahead of itself whenever a new secular growth story emerges. We saw this during the internet boom, in renewable energy, cannabis, and electric vehicles. The underlying trends were real, but the valuations were not always realistic.
The space economy may be entering a similar phase. One reason is that much of the industry's projected growth is still years away.
While commercial launch activity has expanded rapidly, many of the largest revenue opportunities, including in-orbit manufacturing, space infrastructure, and lunar development, remain in their early stages. As a result, you could be paying today for cash flows that may not materialize for years.
Space ain't cheap Space is one of the most expensive industries in the world. Designing satellites, building rockets, launching payloads, maintaining ground infrastructure, and complying with regulatory requirements require enormous up-front investment.
For instance, consider Amazon (AMZN +0.65%), which has committed more than $10 billion to build out its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation. Even after those satellites are built, the company will still have to pay for launches, insurance, ground stations, network operations, and eventual satellite replacements.
Economic uncertainty While it's true that launch costs have fallen dramatically over the past decade, largely because of reusable rockets, lower launch costs can also encourage more competitors to enter the market.
Growing demand doesn't necessarily translate into higher profits if competition expands just as quickly. Then there's government spending, which presents another risk.
Defense and civil space budgets have been important drivers of industry growth. NASA's budget is roughly $24 billion annually, while the U.S. Space Force continues to increase procurement of satellites, launch services, and missile-warning systems. Those contracts have provided significant support to the industry. But that government funding is also political.
Changes in administrations, shifting defense priorities, budget negotiations, or procurement delays could erase that support with the stroke of a pen.
Make no mistake: there is inherent risk when investing in an industry that depends heavily on government customers.
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Expectations in check Over the years, I have found that an awful lot of investors overestimate how quickly new industries can mature and underestimate how many companies fail along the way. Emerging industries rarely develop in a straight line.
Technical setbacks, regulatory delays, financing challenges, and slower-than-expected customer adoption are all common during the early stages of commercialization. Do not ignore this reality.
Of course, this doesn't mean the space economy is a bad long-term story. Satellites are becoming increasingly important for communications, agriculture, defense, weather forecasting, logistics, and navigation. Those trends should continue for decades.
But right now, there are just too many folks assuming the industry's best-case scenario. So until valuations become more grounded in current fundamentals rather than long-term possibilities, be cautious about treating the entire space economy as an automatic buy.
by Alan Boyle on Jul 2, 2026 at 10:42 amJuly 2, 2026 at 10:43 am
An Atlas 5 rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad, sending 29 Amazon Leo satellites into orbit. (United Launch Alliance Photo) Amazon says the overnight launch of 29 satellites should clear the way for its Amazon Leo network to start offering commercial high-speed internet service from space this year, in direct competition with SpaceX’s Starlink network.
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket sent the satellites into low Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:30 a.m. ET today (9:30 p.m. PT Wednesday).
This was the last of eight Atlas 5 launches that Amazon reserved for its satellites. Going forward, ULA will use its next-generation Vulcan rocket to support Amazon Leo’s years-long deployment schedule. Amazon has also made launch reservations with Blue Origin, Arianespace and SpaceX.
The latest liftoff boosts Amazon Leo’s constellation to 396 operational satellites. That will be enough to support continuous connectivity in the initial latitudes targeted for commercial service, according to Chris Weber, vice president of business and product for Amazon Leo.
“Still lots of work ahead — including raising all these new satellites to their assigned altitude — but we’ve completed enough launches for initial service this year, and future missions just add coverage and capacity,” Weber said in a LinkedIn post.
Amazon has been beta-testing the service for months with a select group of customers, but connectivity hasn’t been continuous due to sparse orbital coverage. Amazon Leo’s business plan calls for launching commercial service within a limited zone concentrated at mid-northern and mid-southern latitudes, and gradually expanding the service area as more satellites go up.
“With hundreds of flight-ready satellites standing by at the Cape and a new, dedicated vertical integration facility ready to support Leo Vulcan 1 and subsequent missions, we have a clear path to increase launch and deployment cadence, helping us quickly expand network coverage following an initial service rollout later this year,” Melissa Wuerl, Amazon Leo’s director of launch systems, said in a statement released after the latest launch.
Amazon hasn’t yet announced pricing for satellite broadband service. The first-generation constellation, consisting of 3,232 satellites, is due to reach full deployment in mid-2029 — and Amazon has received regulatory approval for an even larger second-generation constellation.
When Amazon Leo begins commercial service, it will still trail far behind SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, which has more than 10,000 satellites in orbit and 12 million subscribers. The satellites for both Starlink and Amazon Leo are built in the Seattle area.
In the years ahead, SpaceX plans to beef up Starlink’s capabilities in the emerging market for direct-to-device satellite services. Amazon is aggressively targeting that same market through its recent acquisition of Globalstar. Under a separate agreement tied to the deal, Amazon Leo will start powering Apple’s iPhone satellite services starting in 2028.
Amazon's stock held up reasonably well in recent months in spite of the growing fears around hyperscalers' skyrocketing capex figures. The business performs well, and this could now lead to a short-term market overreaction to broader industry long-term problems. Investors should also keep a close eye on the two major short-term risk factors that I outlined earlier this year.
Amazon (AMZN +0.59%) and Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +0.71%) are both trying to become more important to consumers' digital lives.
Amazon already affects how people shop, watch shows, subscribe to services, use smart-home devices, and interact with cloud-powered technology. SpaceX is using Starlink satellite broadband and direct-to-cell service to bring internet access to consumers.
Image source: Getty Images.
Amazon generated $716.9 billion in net sales in 2025, while SpaceX generated just $18.7 billion in revenue. While that size gap does not automatically make Amazon a better stock, it shows the different risk profiles investors are dealing with.
Amazon is already monetizing consumer behavior at scale Amazon's biggest advantage is that it is already embedded in consumers' daily behavior. In 2025, the company generated $269.3 billion in sales from online stores, $172.2 billion from third-party seller services, $68.6 billion from advertising, $49.6 billion from subscriptions, and $128.7 billion from its AWS cloud computing business. Hence, Amazon earns money at several points in the consumer journey, from product discovery and advertising to subscriptions, transactions, seller services, and cloud infrastructure.
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Its advertising business is also gaining momentum, with revenues rising 24% year over year to $17.2 billion in the first quarter. Many Amazon advertisements appear when shoppers are already comparing products or getting ready to buy. The company's advertising business is proving to be a competitive edge because Amazon is monetizing purchase intent, not just screen time.
Amazon's relationship with consumers also extends well beyond shopping. Prime, Prime Video, Kindle, Fire TV, Echo, Ring, Blink, and eero give the company multiple ways to connect to customers across entertainment, reading, smart-home devices, home security, subscriptions, and Wi-Fi.
Beyond all of that, though, AWS continues to be a key growth engine. In the first quarter, AWS revenue rose 28% year over year to $37.6 billion, while AWS operating income reached $14.2 billion, up from $11.5 billion in the prior-year period. The company's large and highly profitable cloud computing business will play a pivotal role in Amazon's artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions.
Amazon possesses the consumer data and cloud infrastructure to support more personalized shopping tools, smarter ads, better digital assistants, and cloud services for companies building their own AI products. The company recently launched Alexa for Shopping, a new AI shopping assistant built from Rufus and Alexa+. Rufus helps shoppers compare products and answer shopping questions, while Alexa+ adds a more conversational and personalized experience across Amazon's app, website, and devices.
The AWS AI infrastructure is also supported by large customer commitments. OpenAI has committed to lease approximately 2 gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon's custom Trainium chips. Anthropic has also committed to securing up to 5 gigawatts of Trainium capacity. Meta Platforms has signed an agreement to deploy tens of millions of Amazon's custom Graviton server chips to support AI workloads.
Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, is the company's low Earth orbit satellite internet network. As of mid-June, the constellation had grown to 367 satellites, and the company has secured more than 100 rocket launches to deploy additional satellites. It's becoming a formidable player in the satellite broadband market.
Additionally, Amazon's agreement to acquire Globalstar could help Amazon Leo connect directly to phones for voice, data, and messaging services beginning in 2028. The company has also entered into a multiyear agreement with Delta Air Lines to install Amazon's Leo satellite technology on its aircraft, with an initial installation on 500 planes starting in 2028.
However, the main risk for Amazon is its elevated spending. Amazon's trailing-12-month free cash flow fell sharply in the first quarter as its AI-related infrastructure spending rose. The company also faces regulatory pressure and heavy competition.
Yet, Amazon is funding these bets from a much stronger profit base than SpaceX.
SpaceX is trying to move closer to consumers through Starlink The biggest way SpaceX could move closer to consumers is through Starlink mobile.
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SpaceX already offers direct-to-cell satellite technology with T-Mobile US in the U.S, allowing compatible phones to connect through Starlink when they are in locations where regular tower coverage is weak or unavailable. According to Reuters, SpaceX also plans to launch a Starlink mobile service via a consumer mobile plan or a mobile connectivity product for U.S. consumers, which could put it in direct competition with Verizon Communications, AT&T, and T-Mobile US. This could position SpaceX as a prominent consumer telecommunications player.
With nearly 10.3 million subscribers, Starlink is already a meaningful consumer internet business. If it expands into mobile service, Starlink could become more useful for travel, emergency coverage, and areas with weak cellular networks.
SpaceX is also expanding its satellite capacity for a larger Starlink business. In January, the Federal Communications Commission approved the company's request for permission to deploy an additional 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites, which would bring SpaceX's authorized network to 15,000. More satellites will help Starlink improve coverage, support direct-to-cell service, and eventually offer faster mobile applications. SpaceX's recent purchase of wireless spectrum from EchoStar is also significant because spectrum is essential for expanding wireless connectivity.
However, investors should not view Starlink mobile as a full replacement for regular wireless networks or 5G service yet. And the bigger issue for investors is valuation and execution risk. SpaceX still trades at about 82 times trailing-12-month sales even after its post-IPO pullback. That type of ambitious valuation is particularly difficult to justify for a company that is still relying heavily on Starlink's profits while pouring funds into rockets, AI infrastructure, spectrum expansion, and mobile ambitions. The Starship rocket, which has yet to carry a commercial payload, is especially important because it could help SpaceX launch larger satellites and expand Starlink capacity more efficiently, but delays would weaken a major part of the company's growth story.
SpaceX can prove a more disruptive connectivity story if Starlink mobile becomes a widely used consumer wireless platform. But Amazon looks like the stronger risk-adjusted winner in the race to own a piece of consumers' digital lives.
Amazon said it now has enough satellites in orbit to begin "initial service" of its Leo internet-from-space network later this year.
The company shipped 29 satellites into orbit around 12:30 a.m. ET on Thursday atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The mission brings Amazon's total constellation to more than 390 satellites, which is "enough to support continuous service across initial latitudes," Chris Weber, vice president of business and product for Amazon Leo, wrote in a post on X.
It's a key milestone for Amazon as the company tries to make Leo a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink in the low Earth orbit satellite market. In November, Amazon began offering an "enterprise preview" of Leo for select businesses, but it has yet to launch its service for consumers and government customers.
Amazon's initial commercial service will likely be limited to users in certain geographies. Future missions will "add coverage and capacity," Weber said.
SpaceX had a four-year head start on Amazon, launching Starlink in 2015. It has since amassed a constellation of around 10,000 satellites and more than 10 million subscribers. Amazon announced the creation of Kuiper in 2019, and later changed the name to Leo.
Read more CNBC tech newsMeta's push into cloud computing means Wall Street has to prepare for lower marginsChip stocks that notched record rallies in second quarter start Q3 with a dudPlayStation will end physical disc production for new games in 2028Employers who laid off workers citing AI are already starting to regret itAmazon aims to build a constellation of roughly 7,700 satellites, but the effort has been slowed by a shortage of rocket capacity. In its January request for an extension on regulatory deployment deadlines, the company cited delays beyond its control, including a "shortage in the near-term availability" of rockets. Amazon in 2022 signed a historic deal to reserve rocket launches with ULA, Arianespace and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, before purchasing rides with SpaceX. Many of those providers have experienced delays with their launch vehicles.
Another setback came in May, when one of Blue Origin's New Glenn rockets exploded on the launchpad during a hot-fire test, just days before it was slated to carry a batch of Amazon satellites. The company is currently rebuilding the pad, and working to determine what caused the anomaly.
Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp have said the company is determined to return New Glenn to flight later this year. New Glenn is a giant, partially reusable rocket that seeks to compete with SpaceX's Starship rocket and can carry heavier payloads of up to 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit.
Amazon said Thursday its next Leo mission will use ULA's Vulcan heavy-lift rocket, "which will carry even larger Leo payloads and help increase our deployment rate."
"With hundreds of flight-ready satellites standing by at the Cape and a new, dedicated vertical integration facility ready to support Leo Vulcan 1 and subsequent missions, we have a clear path to increase launch and deployment cadence, helping us quickly expand network coverage following an initial service rollout later this year," Melissa Wuerl, Leo's director of launch systems, said in a statement.
Amazon Leo is displayed during the Delivering the Future EMEA 2026 event at Amazon's LCY3 fulfilment centre in Dartford, Britain, June 4, 2026. REUTERS/Toby Shepheard/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
SummaryCompaniesAmazon Leo network reaches 394 satellites in orbitInitial service to start later this year, executive saysLeo internet service is a budding rival to SpaceX's StarlinkWASHINGTON, July 2 (Reuters) - Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab expects to roll out initial internet service with its Leo broadband satellite network later this year after the company's latest launch put the orbiting constellation's satellite count over 390, a company executive said on Thursday.
Amazon's latest batch of 29 satellites lifted off from Florida early on Thursday aboard an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance, marking the company's 14th launch of dozens more planned to deploy more than 3,200 satellites that will provide global internet coverage from space.
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"Still lots of work ahead – including raising all these new satellites to their assigned altitude," Amazon's Leo chief Chris Weber said in a post on X. "But we’ve completed enough launches for initial service this yr, and future missions just add coverage and capacity."
Weber did not say in which region Amazon plans to begin service, but initial service is expected to begin near Earth's north and south poles and gradually spread inward toward the equator as more satellites are added.
The constellation has 394 satellites in orbit so far of 398 launched since April 2025, according to spaceflight analyst and Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
The growing Leo constellation is a budding rival to SpaceX's established Starlink, which has a growing tally of roughly 10,000 satellites. Like Starlink, Amazon plans to offer internet service to consumers with Leo terminals - sized from roughly the size of a laptop to larger and more powerful versions - as well as governments and companies such as airlines.
Amazon has been targeting a service start of mid-2026, relying on tens of billions of dollars worth of rocket bookings to loft its satellites into space. ULA's Atlas V has become a workhorse for the network as the other rockets Amazon plans to use, Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan, are grounded.
A New Glenn rocket exploded on its launchpad last month, destroying the launch tower and other hardware. The company's CEO Dave Limp expects to resume New Glenn launches by the end of the year as engineers zero in on the rocket's engine section to figure out what caused the explosion.
ULA's new Vulcan rocket, which is booked to launch at least 40 Leo missions for Amazon, is also grounded over a solid rocket motor separation issue it encountered in February. Vulcan uses the same Blue Origin-built BE-4 engines as New Glenn and may see its return-to-flight further delayed if Blue Origin finds the BE-4 engines at fault for the New Glenn explosion.
ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said Blue Origin engineers "are being transparent with us as they work through the investigation. If there are crossover items with the BE-4 engines, we will collaborate with the team to find root cause and address it."
Amazon has roughly 100 rocket launches booked worth at least $82 billion in total to build out the constellation. Its other launch providers include French rocket maker Arianespace's Ariane 6 and SpaceX's Falcon 9, the partially reusable rocket that has been vital to SpaceX's deployment of its own Starlink satellites.
Reporting by Joey Roulette, Editing by Nick Zieminski
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Joey Roulette is a space reporter for Reuters covering the business and politics of the global space industry, often focusing on space power competition and how commercial interests intersect with international relations. He was part of a team that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for Reuters' coverage of Elon Musk's business empire. On the space beat for roughly a decade, Joey previously worked for the New York Times, the Verge, and various publications in Florida.
My Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) call is straightforward. The 24/7 Wall St. price target for Amazon is $323.43 by July 2, 2027, and my base-case path has the stock crossing $300 for the first time around April 2, 2027 at a modeled $301.86. From a current price of $241.70, that is roughly 33.81% of upside. My recommendation is buy, at high confidence.
24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary Metric Value Current Price $241.70 24/7 Wall St. Price Target $323.43 $300 Crossed On April 2, 2027 Upside 33.81% Recommendation BUY Confidence Level 90% How Amazon Got Back to $241 After a Rough Spring Amazon is up 3.17% over the past week and 9.63% over the past year, but trading has been choppy. Shares fell 7.49% in the last month and sit about 12% below the 52-week high of $278.56, with a low of $196.
The setup got better fast in Q1 2026: EPS of $2.78 topped the $1.73 consensus, a 60.69% surprise on revenue of $181.52 billion, up 16.61% YoY. AWS grew 28%, the fastest in 15 quarters, and Prime Day just kicked off with online spending rising 5.3% on day one to $8.3 billion.
The Bull Case for $370 The bull scenario takes Amazon to $370.31, or 53.21% upside. Three engines drive it. AWS is compounding at 28% on a 37.7% operating margin, with landmark AI compute commitments from OpenAI (2 GW of Trainium), Anthropic (up to 5 GW), and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META).
The custom-chips business already runs at a $20 billion annual run rate with triple-digit YoY growth. Advertising is a $70 billion+ TTM franchise growing 24% at software-like margins.
North America retail margins expanded to 7.9% from 6.3%, and unit growth hit 15%, the highest since COVID. Analyst consensus already sits at $312.99 with 62 buy ratings and zero sells.
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The Risks Worth Watching The bear path stops at $279.32, still 15.57% upside, but the risks are real. Planned 2026 CapEx of roughly $200 billion pushed free cash flow down sharply, and long-term debt has climbed to $119.1 billion from $65.6 billion. AWS operating margin slipped to 37.7% from 39.5%, and Q1’s headline net income of $30.25 billion was boosted by $16.8 billion in non-recurring Anthropic gains.
Reddit sentiment turned bearish in late June around “overinvestment in data centres” concerns. It should be noted, however, that bulls counter that adjusted operating income still grew 30% YoY excluding investment gains, and management is guiding to strong long-term return on invested capital from the CapEx surge.
Amazon Price Prediction 2026-2030 My 24/7 Wall St. price target for Amazon is $323.43, a buy with 90% confidence. The tipping factor is AWS re-acceleration paired with a custom-silicon business that already prints $20 billion.
I’d be a buyer here if Q2 revenue lands inside the guided $194 billion to $199 billion range and AWS holds mid-20s growth. I’d stay on the sidelines if AWS decelerates below 22% or CapEx overshoots $210 billion without matching revenue.
Year 24/7 Wall St. Price Target 2026 $270 2027 $323 2028 $385 2029 $460 2030 $552 These projections assume Amazon continues executing on AWS, ads, and custom silicon at a 17.95% annualized base-case return through 2031. Significant upside could come from Trainium winning share from NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), while downside would likely come from a CapEx-driven return-on-capital reset.
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Amazon (AMZN +1.48%) stock lost 12% in June, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. There's a long list of artificial intelligence (AI) concerns that have led to this point, and many of the hyperscalers and other top AI stocks have been dropping of late.
Hyperscalers and hyper spending The average U.S. shopper knows Amazon as an e-commerce giant. It's part of the fabric of society at this point, with its trucks a regular feature on U.S. roads and highways. However, it has many other growing businesses, in particular Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud services provider that houses its AI business.
Image source: Amazon.
AWS has been on fire, and the AI business is thriving. Amazon has a huge assortment of AI tools that can code with prompts, create AI agents, and whip up marketing campaigns in minutes. AWS is the largest cloud provider in the world, with almost a third of the entire market, and its millions of clients are engaging with AI through its platform. In the 2026 first quarter, for example, its Strands agentic AI tool was downloaded 200% more times than the previous quarter. Users of its Kiro developer tool more than doubled sequentially, and Kiro enterprise customer usage increased almost 10-fold.
The platform is also bringing in more sales to AWS, which increased 28% year over year, the fastest pace in 15 quarters.
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It's coming at a cost, and it's not just the cost of creation. Amazon stock had already been crushed by its spending habits, which had been alarming the market. Management said it would spend $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, and although it doubled down on its assertion that this was necessary to position itself for a windfall, the stock tanked anyway. It had made a rebound after its fantastic first-quarter report, but now the next worry is on the table as the AI race continues. With many players and lots of competition, the latest fear is that the spending may not be recouped, even as the technology thrives. According the law of supply and demand, a plethora of options could drive prices down, and the biggest spenders could end up being the biggest losers.
Don't give up on Amazon CEO Andy Jassy explained that it's in a high-investment phase as it prepares to monetize its spending. There's a cash-crunch in laying the groundwork, but not only has it paid off quickly in the past, the infrastructure also lasts for decades.
The market's fear is reasonable, but Amazon is well-positioned to bounce back and reward patients shareholders.
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Amazon is focusing on building chips for its "critical" consumer devices, the company's top hardware executive told CNBC.
In a wide-ranging interview on CNBC's "The Tech Download" podcast, Panos Panay, the head of devices and services at Amazon, discussed, for the first time, the company's approach to semiconductors in its own hardware and how it's experimenting with different types of AI-enabled gadgets.
"We do make our own end-to-end silicon for the devices that we ship," Panay said.
He said Amazon's custom silicon is in devices such as the Echo Show 8, Echo Show 11 and Fire TV.
In October, Amazon unveiled the AZ3 and AZ3 Pro chips designed to run AI models on-device rather than in the cloud. Many device makers see locally run AI as faster and more secure.
Some hardware makers like Apple design their own chips, which can give a consumer electronics company more control over the integration of hardware and software.
"On some of the more critical devices right now, our focus is end-to-end silicon, because to your point, if you really want that hardware and software connection ... and if we're going to go deliver this ambient experience in the home for people in the most secure way, we definitely need to think about how that end-to-end delivery of hardware comes together," Panay said.
Panay added that the company still also uses chips from companies like Qualcomm.
For Amazon, the focus on custom chips is part of its broader push to improve AI on devices.
Amazon launched Alexa+ for general availability in the U.S. this year. Alexa+ is a souped-up version of Amazon's digital assistant, which can handle more complex queries and tasks. Alexa+ can learn context and user patterns. Amazon has a range of hardware from Ring doorbells to Echo Devices and Fire TV. Alexa+ is intended to help users tie all their Amazon products together.
What Panos Panay said about future AI gadgetsAs Amazon's digital assistant gets advanced capabilities, Panay said he was thinking about how users will interact with devices and what that means for future gadgets.
"I think we might be moving away from a world of apps and screens," Panay said, adding that "conversation and context" will be more important for AI assistants.
Asked what kind of gadgets the company was working on, Panay said: "When you think about the future of AI devices, you got to be super skeptical right now for anyone who tells you they know what they are. I have a lab full of devices."
Last month, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told "The Tech Download" that the company was working on 40 new AI-powered devices as consumer electronics companies look for the next big hit after the smartphone.
Alexa+ will continue to compete with offerings from ChatGPT with OpenAI and Google Gemini which are also going after the consumer experience. Google is using the reach of the Android operating system to acquire more users, while companies like Samsung are building a lot of their AI features on Gemini models.
For Amazon, Alexa+ is a way for the company to lock users into its own ecosystem of devices and e-commerce.
Last year, Amazon made a major foray into wearables when it acquired Bee, a company that makes $49.99 wristbands that can understand voice and create lists, answer questions and draft notes.
Panay said there is a "whole roadmap of on-the-go devices." The executive described these devices as gadgets that people carry with them, that collect data and that people talk to.
"So when you are back in the home or when you are at work, that connection stays consistent and contextual," Panay said.
He added that "you won't have to wait long" for an Amazon product like this.
In the latest trading session, Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) closed at $241.70, marking a +1.41% move from the previous day. The stock's performance was ahead of the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.22%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.03%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.66%.
Heading into today, shares of the online retailer had lost 7.09% over the past month, lagging the Retail-Wholesale sector's loss of 5.51% and the S&P 500's loss of 1.21%.
The investment community will be closely monitoring the performance of Amazon in its forthcoming earnings report. In that report, analysts expect Amazon to post earnings of $1.82 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 8.33%. Simultaneously, our latest consensus estimate expects the revenue to be $196.87 billion, showing a 17.39% escalation compared to the year-ago quarter.
For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $8.85 per share and revenue of $826.67 billion, which would represent changes of +23.43% and +15.31%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for Amazon. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. Consequently, upward revisions in estimates express analysts' positivity towards the business operations and its ability to generate profits.
Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.
The Zacks Rank system, spanning from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), boasts an impressive track record of outperformance, audited externally, with #1 ranked stocks yielding an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant. Amazon is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
Investors should also note Amazon's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 26.93. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 17.07, which means Amazon is trading at a premium to the group.
It is also worth noting that AMZN currently has a PEG ratio of 1.56. Comparable to the widely accepted P/E ratio, the PEG ratio also accounts for the company's projected earnings growth. The Internet - Commerce industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.06 as trading concluded yesterday.
The Internet - Commerce industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This industry, currently bearing a Zacks Industry Rank of 182, finds itself in the bottom 27% echelons of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Ensure to harness Zacks.com to stay updated with all these stock-shifting metrics, among others, in the next trading sessions.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) both dropped Q1 2026 results in late April. Google leaned on a high-margin ad engine and a suddenly explosive Cloud unit. Amazon leaned on faster AWS growth, a bigger chip business, and a retail machine that still eats capital for breakfast.
Search Ads Generate Cash. Retail Logistics Burns It. Google delivered $109.90B in revenue, up 21.8% YoY, with operating margin at 36.1%. Search & Other advertising alone hit $60.4 billion, up 19%, and Google Services ran at a 45.3% operating margin.
Amazon posted $181.52B in revenue but converted it into a 13.1% operating margin. AWS grew 28%, its fastest pace in 15 quarters, on a $150 billion run rate. Retail dragged the blended margin lower, the structural tax Alphabet avoids.
Driver Alphabet Amazon Main engine Search ads + Cloud AWS + Stores Op margin 36.1% 13.1% Cloud growth 63% 28% Two AI Bets, Two Very Different Bills Sundar Pichai framed the quarter around vertical integration. Cloud backlog nearly doubled sequentially to “the fact that we own frontier models and own the silicon really helps us stay ahead of the curve.”, and Cloud margin jumped to 32.9% from 17.8% a year earlier.
Andy Jassy is playing heavier. Amazon’s custom chip business runs at $20 billion with Trainium commitments over $225 billion and Anthropic locking in another $100 billion. Capex hit $44.20B in the quarter and free cash flow collapsed 95% on a trailing basis. Alphabet’s FCF fell too, down 46.6%, but from a cleaner starting point.
The Next Test Is Whether Capex Pays Back Prediction markets price Amazon 2026 capex above $200B at 0.77 probability. Alphabet raised full-year capex guidance to $180-190 billion, yet Pichai says core AI response costs already dropped more than 30% after the Gemini 3 upgrade. Efficiency compounds on one side. Fulfillment costs grow on the other.
Watch whether Google Cloud expands margin while shipping the next Gemini Pro, which Polymarket traders give an 85.9% probability of arriving by July 31. For Amazon, monitor Q2 operating income guidance of $20-24B and whether AWS holds its 28% pace.
Why Alphabet Screens Cleaner on This Quarter On this quarter’s numbers, Alphabet screens cleaner. A P/E of 16 against Amazon’s 33.01, a 45% Services margin, and a Cloud backlog that dwarfs peers is a rare combination. Amazon’s case rests on a longer runway: satellite ambitions, robotics, and a chip franchise that could rival NVIDIA. The near-term contrast is an ad machine already printing cash to fund its own AI buildout versus a retail-plus-AWS model still absorbing heavy capex.
Investors interested in Retail-Wholesale stocks should always be looking to find the best-performing companies in the group. Is Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) one of those stocks right now? A quick glance at the company's year-to-date performance in comparison to the rest of the Retail-Wholesale sector should help us answer this question.
Amazon is one of 187 companies in the Retail-Wholesale group. The Retail-Wholesale group currently sits at #12 within the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank includes 16 different groups and is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors.
The Zacks Rank is a successful stock-picking model that emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions. The system highlights a number of different stocks that could be poised to outperform the broader market over the next one to three months. Amazon is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).
Over the past three months, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for AMZN's full-year earnings has moved 0.1% higher. This signals that analyst sentiment is improving and the stock's earnings outlook is more positive.
Our latest available data shows that AMZN has returned about 3.3% since the start of the calendar year. Meanwhile, the Retail-Wholesale sector has returned an average of -1.5% on a year-to-date basis. As we can see, Amazon is performing better than its sector in the calendar year.
Another stock in the Retail-Wholesale sector, Brinker International (EAT - Free Report) , has outperformed the sector so far this year. The stock's year-to-date return is 17.1%.
The consensus estimate for Brinker International's current year EPS has increased 0.5% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
Looking more specifically, Amazon belongs to the Internet - Commerce industry, which includes 35 individual stocks and currently sits at #182 in the Zacks Industry Rank. On average, this group has lost an average of 4.8% so far this year, meaning that AMZN is performing better in terms of year-to-date returns.
On the other hand, Brinker International belongs to the Retail - Restaurants industry. This 36-stock industry is currently ranked #191. The industry has moved +0.8% year to date.
Investors interested in the Retail-Wholesale sector may want to keep a close eye on Amazon and Brinker International as they attempt to continue their solid performance.
Meta Platforms is developing plans to build a cloud infrastructure business that would sell access to AI computing power and models. It would take on industry leaders like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Greyston Holt, Alan Ritchson, Jasper Jones, Maria Sten
Shane Mahood/Prime
It seems clear that Amazon wants to make seasons of Reacher for as long as possible, with infinite source material, high viewership, and high-profile action star Alan Ritchson. But its effort to fill seasonal gaps with a spinoff is taking a strange turn.
Reacher season 4’s release date is Wednesday, August 12, just over a month from now. Its spinoff, Neagley, focused on Maria Sten’s recurring Reacher ally, had not previously received a release date, even though it seemed like it should air before Reacher season 4. Now, Amazon has announced a date, and it’s a strange choice.
Reacher will do a triple-episode premiere for season 4 on August 12, and then air weekly through September 16. Pretty standard. But on September 16, right after the Reacher finale airs, Amazon will put all eight episodes of Neagley online.
We have seen shows act as lead-ins for new series before, something with big views trying to boost something new. But while Neagley seems like it could use that Reacher boost, airing all eight episodes as a binge drop right at that moment, likely able to be finished by the weekend, is a strange move that seems like it could make the show forgotten about almost immediately unless it makes an enormous impact.
Maria Sten, Greyston Holt
Sabrina Lantos/Prime
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I have often compared this Reacher-Neagley idea to the relationship between The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, the latter meant to be an interim series between seasons of the flagship. But Fear did not get TWD as a lead-in, and instead premiered five months later, airing weekly after that. This move would seem to me to suggest a lack of confidence in Neagley, perhaps believing that it would do poorly if it aired 5-6 months from now in between Reacher seasons, standing on its own.
As a fan of Reacher, the idea of a Neagley spinoff has never made much sense to me. The show has tried to shoehorn her into stories she was never a part of in the original book, and I simply don’t think she’s all that compelling of a character, no offense to Sten. Her show sounds like a copy of a Reacher plot we’ve essentially already done (a friend from her past is killed and she tries to uncover the mystery and get justice), except with Neagley instead of Reacher, and I just don’t think the two are remotely comparable characters.
We’ll see if my skepticism is unwarranted and Neagley performs better than I predict. But a binge drop the night of the Reacher finale still seems like it could do more harm than good, especially if the show compares unfavorably to the season that just aired.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
by Lisa Stiffler on Jul 1, 2026 at 9:00 amJuly 1, 2026 at 7:53 am
Wind Wall, a wind farm in California’s Tehachapi Mountains, produces renewable energy for Amazon Web Services. (Amazon Photo) Amazon’s carbon footprint jumped 16% last year after several years of little or no increase. The company emitted nearly 80.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025. By comparison, that’s slightly higher than the nation of New Zealand’s emissions.
Amazon disclosed its climate-related data in its most comprehensive sustainability report to date, which includes a breakdown of its carbon sources, water use and other environmental impacts.
Not surprisingly, energy use showed the biggest rate of increase in the 2025 carbon tally as Amazon and other tech companies are working to rapidly expand their data center capacity to meet AI computing demand.
For the first time since 2019, the company also reported an uptick in its “carbon intensity” — a measure of how much carbon was emitted relative to each dollar of revenue. Amazon has promoted this metric as a sign that it can decouple its growth from its climate impacts.
*Million of metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent. † Grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per dollar of revenue. ‡ Carbon emissions for 2025 were calculated using a market-based method, including the application of Environmental Attribute Credits (EACs). (2025 Amazon Sustainability Report) Despite emissions moving in the wrong direction and ongoing data center-driven challenges, the Seattle-area company remains committed to its pledge of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
When it comes to that goal, “I remain confident and optimistic in the overarching vision and the long-term progress we continue to make toward it,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, in the foreword to the company’s annual report.
The report highlights areas of success that include:
Data center efficiency: Amazon’s data centers are 9% more efficient than the public cloud average and 30% more efficient than on-premises data centers at directing energy toward computing rather than cooling, lighting or overhead. Data center water use: Amazon is seven times more efficient in its water use than the industry average thanks to its use of air cooling at most sites, most of the year. 100% clean energy overall: For the third year running, Amazon matched its company-wide electricity use with an equivalent volume of purchased clean energy, although it technically still draws on fossil fuels for some of its energy. Electric vehicle fleet: It has the largest corporate EV fleet in North America, with more than 52,700 delivery vans worldwide. It’s halfway to meeting its 2030 goal of 100,000 EVs. The company also reported improvements in reducing packaging and plastic use in delivered items; increasing use of low-carbon building materials in data center construction; and progress toward becoming water positive at its data centers, meaning it aims to replenish more water to communities than it uses.
The Amazon-backed Climate Pledge — an effort to get other organizations to commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 — has grown to 656 signatories after adding 107 companies this year. It marks a notable increase at a time when companies are growing quieter about climate commitments, with some stepping back from earlier goals.
But the surge in data center investment shows little sign of slowing, which will keep complicating Amazon’s path to lower emissions. CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon expects to spend a record $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, including “AI, chips, robotics, and low-Earth orbit satellites.”
Not all reactions to that buildout have been positive — even within the company. Members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice this month testified before the Seattle City Council in favor of data center requirements for renewable energy and labor protections, though Amazon doesn’t operate any data centers within city limits.
In the report, Amazon CSO Hurst acknowledged that AI-fueled advances could catalyze sustainability solutions or slow progress toward climate goals.
“But what alternative do we have,” she said, “but to continue to invest, learn, and move forward to try to solve one of the world’s most challenging issues?”
Artificial intelligence has produced no shortage of headline-grabbing stories. Every week seems to bring another breakthrough model from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, while Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) dominates discussions around the chips powering the AI revolution.
Yet history shows that the companies creating the most value aren’t always the ones making the most noise. During the cloud computing boom, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) quietly built Amazon Web Services (AWS) into a business that now generates tens of billions of dollars in operating income each year. The same pattern may be emerging in AI, where Amazon’s biggest advantage isn’t building the best chatbot — it’s becoming the platform where businesses deploy them.
Bedrock Is the AI Platform Most Investors Overlook Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts during the first-quarter earnings conference call, “Bedrock…saw 170% growth in customer spend quarter over quarter and processed more tokens in Q1 than all prior years combined.”
That isn’t just a usage milestone — it suggests enterprise AI adoption has shifted from experimentation to production.
Bedrock isn’t another large language model competing with ChatGPT or Gemini. Instead, it serves as a managed platform that lets businesses access multiple foundation models — including Anthropic’s Claude, Amazon’s Nova, Meta Platforms‘ (NASDAQ:META) Llama, and others — through a single interface while AWS handles security, governance, and infrastructure.
That strategy mirrors what AWS did in cloud computing. Companies didn’t choose AWS because Amazon built the best database or operating system. They chose it because AWS became the easiest place to run almost everything.
Amazon Is Competing for the Most Valuable Layer of AI The AI market is rapidly separating into distinct layers.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Company Primary AI Focus Nvidia AI chips and computing hardware Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure AI platform and OpenAI partnership Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) Gemini models and Vertex AI cloud platform Amazon AWS infrastructure and Bedrock AI platform Unlike OpenAI or Anthropic, Amazon doesn’t need to win the race to build the smartest model. It only needs to become the preferred platform where enterprises deploy AI applications. That opportunity may be larger than many investors appreciate.
During Amazon’s Q1 call, Jassy also noted that AWS’s AI business has reached an annual revenue run rate exceeding $15 billion, while Bedrock customer spending grew 170% quarter-over-quarter. Those figures suggest AI workloads are moving from pilot projects into everyday business operations.
As more companies deploy AI agents capable of completing multi-step tasks, inference demand — the computing required every time an AI model generates an answer — should continue expanding. Every inference request creates demand for GPUs, networking equipment, memory chips, and cloud infrastructure, all of which strengthen AWS’s ecosystem.
Investors May Be Looking in the Wrong Place Granted, Amazon doesn’t receive the same attention as Nvidia’s GPUs or OpenAI’s newest model releases. That said, enterprise customers typically care less about who built the model than whether their applications run securely, reliably, and at scale. That’s precisely where Bedrock fits.
Surprisingly, Amazon’s decision to support multiple competing AI models could become one of its biggest competitive advantages. Businesses gain flexibility without locking themselves into a single vendor, while Amazon earns revenue regardless of which model customers ultimately choose.
Key Takeaway In short, Amazon may not produce the flashiest AI headlines, but it is positioning itself to own one of the industry’s most valuable pieces: the enterprise platform where AI applications are built and deployed. The latest Bedrock usage figures suggest that strategy is already gaining traction.
Ultimately, investors shouldn’t view Amazon as simply another participant in the AI race. They should view it as the company building the digital highway that many of the race’s winners will travel. If enterprise AI adoption continues accelerating, Bedrock could become as foundational to artificial intelligence as AWS became to cloud computing — and that would make Amazon one of the AI era’s biggest long-term beneficiaries.
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The market has been wobbly lately, with the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.79%) and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC +1.52%) dipping by nearly 3% and 6%, respectively, over the past month.
Some stock market indicators are also sounding the alarm. The S&P 500 Shiller CAPE Ratio, which measures whether the index is over- or undervalued, is reaching heights not seen since the dot-com bubble burst. Back then, the ratio reached a record high of around 44. As of this writing, it's just over 41, the second highest point in history.
The Buffett indicator, named after Warren Buffett, is also at record highs. This metric measures the relationship between the total value of U.S. stocks and GDP, and according to Buffett himself, investors are "playing with fire" when it nears 200%. Currently, this metric sits at around 234%.
To be clear, this doesn't necessarily mean that a market crash is imminent or that we're in a bubble that's about to pop. The market is incredibly complex, and trying to predict what will happen in the near term can be costly. Fortunately, there's one move that history says never steers investors wrong.
Image source: Getty Images.
History says this is the best move investors can make While it's impossible to say when the next downturn will begin, it's bound to happen eventually. And when it does, investors who own a healthy portfolio of quality stocks will win out.
Many stocks have experienced unprecedented growth in recent years, but a soaring stock price doesn't necessarily mean the underlying company is healthy. Some stocks are fueled by hype and speculation, so even if they appear to be thriving on paper, they could be incredibly overvalued and due for a pullback soon.
During the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, for example, hundreds of tech companies crashed and burned. Although many of these high-profile stocks had soared in valuation in the years leading up to the bursting bubble, factors such as unsustainable business models and poor finances made it impossible for them to survive the bear market that followed.
^SPX data by YCharts
Not all tech companies failed during that time, though. Those with solid fundamentals were resilient enough to weather the collapse of the tech sector, and the S&P 500 itself has delivered total returns of more than 700% since 2000.
Right now is a particularly smart time to comb through your portfolio and ensure you're investing only in stocks whose valuations align with their underlying fundamentals. With the market still near record highs, now could be a good moment to sell any stocks that are no longer healthy investments.
A long-term outlook is more important than ever If a bear market or recession is coming, even strong stocks can take a beating. Investors who hold their stocks for at least a few years, however, will be in the best position for substantial growth.
During the dot-com bear market, for instance, Amazon (AMZN 0.68%) lost nearly 95% its value. Many investors would have been tempted to jump ship during that time, but those who stayed the course would have doubled their money in a little over a decade. Between 1999 and today, Amazon has earned total returns of more than 4,000%.
AMZN Total Return Level data by YCharts
In the short term, the market can be brutal. But if history proves anything, it's that strong companies have the best shot at surviving volatility and delivering positive total returns over time.
When you're choosing stocks, look for key metrics suggesting a fundamentally sound company. Focusing on factors such as a company's business model, profitability, leadership team, and industry health can make it easier to determine whether a stock will survive a downturn.
No matter what's coming for the market, history says that investing in quality companies and holding them for the long haul will set you up for success.
"Artificial," Luca Guadagnino's starry film about Sam Altman and OpenAI, has been acquired by the indie distributor Neon after it was dropped by Amazon MGM Studios.
Amazon's AI strength runs through AWS and enterprise cloud infrastructure demand. Alphabet has more AI monetization paths across search, YouTube, Android, and cloud.
Amazon has announced several multi-billion dollar cloud/artificial intelligence (AI)-focused public sector initiatives.
The announcements, made Tuesday (June 30) at the 2026 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit in Washington, D.C, include specialized infrastructure for defense contractors, migration incentives for intelligence agencies, and a global engineering program for AI deployment.
Among the initiatives is a $1 billion cloud incentive program for the U.S. intelligence community. While AWS is the intelligence services longest-running cloud partner, many workloads have yet to migrate, leading to the launch of this program to “eliminate the migration costs that have kept some locked in on-premises systems.”
In the defense sector, AWS has introduced its Secret Cloud for Industry (ASCI), designed to let defense contractors run contractor-owned classified workloads on the same AWS infrastructure trusted by the Pentagon, “in their own physically and logically isolated environment purpose-built to meet the most demanding security and compliance requirements.”
AWS will also invest $1 billion in Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), a new global organization that will put thousands of engineers on-site with customers to co-develop AI solutions. This program is aimed at accelerating the development of AI applications from months into days.
“At the center is the AI-Driven Development Lifecycle, a new approach to software development that combines AI-powered execution with human oversight and dynamic team collaboration that builds intelligence for a customer’s next project,” the company said.
In other Amazon news, PYMNTS wrote recently about how the company and rival Walmart had moved past the battle for consumer spending in search of something “even more consequential:” making themselves into the operating systems between shoppers, brands, advertisers and commerce infrastructure.
For Amazon, the report said, that means things like continuing to promote Prime Day as a membership and ecosystem engine rather than merely a shopping event.
For Walmart, it means the expansion of the company’s retail media ambitions via a new partnership with Google and YouTube, offering advertisers more access to Walmart shopper data and closed-loop measurement capabilities.
“Individually, these stories appear disconnected,” the report added. “Collectively, they point toward a single conclusion: the future of retail may depend less on who sells products and more on who controls the systems that influence how products are discovered, marketed and purchased. Amazon found those opportunities in cloud computing, advertising and subscriptions. Walmart sees them in advertising, marketplace services, memberships and data monetization.”
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The Aspen Institute Financial Security Program (Aspen FSP) has launched a new effort focused on reducing the scale and severity of scams affecting Americans.
The Scam Prevention Initiative aims to improve how scams are measured, tracked and understood; bring together industry, government and civil society leaders to determine priorities and measure progress; advance information-sharing and practical solutions that help organizations prevent scams, disrupt criminal activity and protect consumers; and ensure scam prevention remains a national priority for business leaders and policymakers, the organization said in a June 23 press release.
“Fraud and scams are a shared threat, and they require a shared response,” Kate Griffin, director of the Scam Prevention Initiative at Aspen FSP, said in the release.
The initiative will be a newly established Leadership Group on Scam Prevention and will include issue-specific forums that bring together technical experts, law enforcement officials, consumer advocates, policymakers and industry practitioners.
Participants in the Leadership Group include AARP, American Bankers Association, Amazon, Apple, Block,Capital One, Citizens Financial Group, Gen, Google, JPMorganChase, Match Group, Microsoft, PayPal, Target, Walmart and Zelle.
Ravi Govindaraju, head of product, trust and security at JPMorganChase, said in the release: “We’re proud to join this Initiative and support the kind of ecosystem-wide approach needed to bring public, private and nonprofit organizations together around practical solutions that help people prevent scams and keep their finances secure.”
JPMorganChase said in May that it is supporting an Aspen FSP program that is working with Propel to pilot real-time transaction blocking to prevent electronic benefit transfer (EBT) theft.
Abigail Bishop, head of scam prevention at Amazon, said in the June 23 press release: “We’re committed to ensuring scammers cannot exploit Amazon’s brand to take advantage of the customers who trust us — from holding bad actors accountable to educating customers on how to stay safe.”
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in April that social media scams generated $2.1 billion in losses last year, an eightfold increase since 2020.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Financial Scams and Consumer Trust” found that 4 in 10 households have fallen victim to digital scams in the past five years. Most scams of individual consumers inflict on average hundreds of dollars in losses, while investment and Social Security scams take a toll measured in thousands of dollars.
“For financial institutions, combatting scams isn’t just about maintaining the security of their customers’ accounts — it’s also pivotal to building trust and lasting relationships,” the report said.
Amazon has expanded the price history function of its agentic artificial intelligence (AI) shopping assistant.
Alexa for Shopping now shows 30, 90, and 365 days of price history, “so customers can feel confident they’re getting a great deal,” Amazon wrote in a recent blog post.
“Since launching in 2024, over 50 million customers have checked price history to make informed shopping decisions,” the post said. “With the average customer checking three times a month, price history has become a regular part of their shopping journey for everything from everyday essentials to bigger purchases.”
Amazon gives users two ways to access the feature: by clicking the price history link on any product detail page, or by asking Alexa by tapping the Alexa for Shopping icon and asking things like: “Has this item been on sale in the past 30 days?”
The feature is available to all customers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and India, with full availability expected in the coming weeks, Amazon said.
“Alexa for Shopping changes where the buying decision starts,” PYMNTS wrote last week as the company’s Prime Day sales event got underway. “Instead of asking shoppers to scroll through product pages and compare deals themselves, Amazon can use their shopping history and stated preferences to narrow the options before they reach the cart.”
In addition to price history, the tool lets shoppers set a target price and let Alexa complete the purchase when that price is reached, something that “puts Amazon’s AI inside discovery, comparison and checkout,” PYMNTS added.
The report cited PYMNTS Intelligence data showing that 47% of eCommerce shoppers used AI during their latest purchase. ChatGPT’s share as a product research tool climbed from 2% to 30% in two years, the same data shows.
“Retailers now have to compete for the recommendation before a shopper reaches a product page,” PYMNTS added.
In other Amazon news, a recent analysis from J.P. Morgan found that the company became America’s largest retailer in terms of gross merchandise value sometime in 2025, surpassing tis rival retail giant Walmart.
J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth and his team credited Amazon’s gains to its selection, pricing and delivery speed, according to a report by Seeking Alpha.
They also found that the growth of Amazon’s retail business surpassed that of the larger eCommerce market during the first quarter and that the company is now estimated to enjoy a 47% share of the U.S. eCommerce market.
There's a growing argument that the market has been pricing Amazon.com Inc. NASDAQ: AMZN on fear rather than fundamentals in recent weeks. The CapEx concerns, the FTC noise, and the Blue Origin setback have all combined to leave the stock looking unusually unloved.
Amazon.com Today
$238.71 -1.43 (-0.59%)
As of 03:18 PM Eastern
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52-Week Range$196.00▼
$278.56P/E Ratio28.55
Price Target$312.78
But beneath the headlines, the underlying demand picture for one of Amazon's biggest growth engines is suddenly looking very strong. As we'll see below, a new survey of IT executives by Jefferies has just delivered exactly the kind of data point the bulls have been looking for. According to the poll of 40 tech executives, cloud spending is expected to grow more than 10% in 2026, up from 9.6% in 2025.
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Even more strikingly, an overwhelming 95% of respondents said they expect their cloud budgets to increase next year.
For Amazon, whose AWS unit is the world's leading cloud provider, that's exactly the kind of demand backdrop that the recent share price weakness has not priced in.
The Survey That Changes the ConversationShares of Amazon are currently trading around $240, having recovered modestly from last week's lows but still down meaningfully from the all-time highs set last month. The selling pressure has been driven by a familiar mix of CapEx concerns and a broader cooling in sentiment toward AI infrastructure plays. That backdrop is exactly what makes the Jefferies survey so timely.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) Price Chart for Tuesday, June, 30, 2026
The survey showed "bullish spend intentions" for AWS specifically, with 56% of CIOs expecting to spend more on the platform in 2026. While placing AWS slightly behind Microsoft Corp NASDAQ: MSFT in the rankings, the data still strongly endorsed the platform's positioning at a time when the market has been questioning whether Amazon's enormous CapEx spending will translate into meaningful revenue.
Why This Hits Right Where the Market Is WrongThe reason this matters so much is that it directly challenges the bearish narrative that's been driving the recent selloff. Much of Amazon's underperformance has come down to a single concern—that the company is spending too much on AI infrastructure too fast.
However, the Jefferies survey points to exactly the kind of demand picture that supports the CapEx story. If 95% of CIOs plan to increase cloud spending next year, and AWS is clearly a beneficiary of that trend, then the spending Amazon has been doing on data centers and AI infrastructure isn't speculative. It's being built to meet demand that the customers themselves are explicitly telling analysts they plan to deliver.
In other words, the bulls who've been arguing that the CapEx concern is overblown just got a serious data point to support their case. The market may not have caught onto it yet, but it usually doesn't take long for survey data this constructive to start showing up in analyst notes and revised earnings estimates.
The Bigger Strategic PictureWhat makes the survey particularly encouraging is the role of AI within it. About 68% of CIOs now have a dedicated AI budget, and around 11% of overall IT budgets are now allocated to AI workloads. Just as importantly, 73% of respondents said their actual year-to-date AI spending is tracking above their initial budgets, with some companies already having burned through their full annual AI allocation.
For AWS, which sits at the heart of the AI infrastructure stack and counts Anthropic as one of its most important customers, that's exactly the kind of dynamic that should compound into meaningful revenue growth in the quarters ahead.
Combine it with its other deepening enterprise AI partnerships, and the continued momentum within the broader Amazon business, and the bull case at $240 looks considerably more attractive than the recent price action would suggest.
Where That Leaves the OpportunityTo be sure, none of this immediately solves the near-term challenges Amazon faces. The FTC situation is still in play, the broader AI CapEx narrative will take time to shift, and there could be more volatility ahead before sentiment fully turns. The patience tax that comes with owning Amazon right now is real.
But for those willing to look past the noise, the Jefferies survey quietly shifts the underlying argument. The market has been worrying about whether AWS's demand justifies the spending. The customers themselves are now telling analysts it does.
Should You Invest $1,000 in Amazon.com Right Now?Before you consider Amazon.com, you'll want to hear this.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Tuesday launched a new Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization, committing $1 billion in internal resources to help customers build and deploy artificial intelligence systems.
The new unit will embed AI-focused engineers within customer organizations to develop purpose-built AI agents and accelerate implementation.
AWS said the engagements are intended to deliver working systems within weeks while enabling customers to manage and expand them independently.
The $1 billion commitment reflects internal Amazon resources rather than an external investment or joint venture.
The move comes as demand grows for hands-on support with enterprise AI adoption, prompting technology providers to expand deployment services.
"We've had capabilities over the years, but structurally this is like getting everybody together in one business unit with a common rubric of deployment," Francessca Vasquez, AWS vice president of Frontier AI Engineering and Services, said in an interview. "It's the first time we're doing it in that way."
Vasquez said the organization will launch with thousands of forward deployed engineers. Small teams of roughly five or six engineers will work alongside customers' business, engineering and security staff, as well as AI agents capable of completing tasks autonomously.
In a blog post announcing the initiative, AWS said the objective is to leave customers with more than deployed software.
"Customers leave AWS FDE deployments with both new solutions and new engineering capabilities," the company wrote. "Along with agentic systems running in their own AWS environment, they gain lasting AI skills, workflows, and patterns they can use to innovate independently."
The forward deployed engineering model, pioneered by Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE:PLTR) more than a decade ago, places engineers inside client organizations to tailor deployments while transferring expertise to internal teams.
The approach has gained momentum as companies accelerate AI adoption. Earlier this year, OpenAI (Unlisted:OPAI) and Anthropic launched their own FDE ventures with financial and consulting partners. AWS said its new organization makes it the first hyperscale cloud provider to establish a dedicated forward deployed engineering unit.
"The currency that the customers are always talking about right now is speed," Vasquez said. "We do see FDE being a choice for customers who are looking for accelerated value back to their stakeholders, their customers, their executive teams."
As companies struggle to integrate AI, they’re increasingly ready to bring in outside help — and service providers are launching new purpose-built groups to make sure they get it.
On Tuesday, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a new internal organization for AI-focused forward-deployed engineers. Engineers on the new team will embed within companies to deploy purpose-built agents, focusing on fast engagements and customer self-sufficiency.
In a post announcing the new org, AWS VP of Frontier AI Francessca Vasquez emphasized that the org would do more than build and maintain requested systems. “Customers leave AWS FDE deployments with both new solutions and new engineering capabilities,” the announcement reads. “Along with agentic systems running in their own AWS environment, they gain lasting AI skills, workflows, and patterns they can use to innovate independently.”
Amazon says $1 billion will be committed to the new org, although the figure represents internal Amazon resources rather than a joint venture or conventional investment.
Pioneered by Palantir, the forward-deployed engineer (FDE) model has become increasingly popular as a way to manage AI deployments. In a typical FDE system, an engineer from the contracting company (in this case, AWS) works for the client temporarily while the system is being established, allowing them to respond directly as internal opportunities or challenges emerge.
In the FDE model, much of the relevant technology can be reused between deployments, while still being tailored to the specifics of each company’s needs and workflows. It also gives the client company an influx of expertise and puts primary responsibility for the deployment in the hands of the contractor. The biggest downside is the labor involved, since it means maintaining a full corps of FDE engineers to install and maintain the company’s technology.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have launched their own FDE joint ventures in recent months, valued at $4 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively. In those two cases, the AI labs were paired with private equity firms, which provided both the capital to launch and connections with client corporations in their portfolios.
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Russell Brandom has been covering the tech industry since 2012, with a focus on platform policy and emerging technologies. He previously worked at The Verge and Rest of World, and has written for Wired, The Awl and MIT’s Technology Review. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at 412-401-5489.
Amazon Web Services on Tuesday announced it is investing $1 billion in a new Forward Deployed Engineering unit that will help its customers build and roll out artificial intelligence systems.
A forward-deployed engineer, or an FDE, is an employee who is embedded directly within a different business to try and accelerate a technical transformation. Defense contractor Palantir coined the term more than a decade ago, but it's seen a resurgence among software vendors looking to boost adoption by taking talent directly into clients' facilities.
Leading model developers, including OpenAI and Anthropic, announced their own FDE companies earlier this year, in partnership with banks, private equity and consulting firms. Now, AWS is looking to carve out its own piece of the market.
"We've had capabilities over the years, but structurally this is like getting everybody together in one business unit with a common rubric of deployment," Francessca Vasquez, AWS' vice president of frontier AI engineering and services, said in an interview. "It's the first time we're doing it in that way."
Amazon, which is the top cloud provider by revenue, is the first hyperscaler to announce this kind of initiative.
Vasquez said AWS' new unit will be seeded with "thousands" of FDEs. An initial pod of roughly five or six engineers will be embedded within an AWS customer at a time, and those employees will also work alongside AI agents, which are tools that can independently complete tasks on behalf of their users.
AWS said in a blog post that its FDE embeds will partner closely with customers' business, engineering and security staffers, and they'll look to leave behind self-sufficient teams with new solutions and capabilities in a matter of weeks.
"The currency that the customers are always talking about right now is speed," Vasquez said. "We do see FDE being a choice for customers who are looking for accelerated value back to their stakeholders, their customers, their executive teams."
Read more CNBC tech newsThe memory shortage shaking Apple and Microsoft is 'existential crisis' for smaller playersThe AI boom is colliding with a new threat: Severe weatherChina's Zhipu is closing in on top U.S. AI models with Anthropic and OpenAI held backHow GE Vernova builds the massive gas turbines powering the AI data center boomIn May, Anthropic announced it had formed a new "AI services company" with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs to help mid-sized businesses deploy its Claude AI models.
Days later, Anthropic's chief rival, OpenAI, announced the OpenAI Deployment Company alongside TPG, Advent International, Bain Capital, Brookfield Asset Management and other firms. It said the new organization would expand OpenAI's ability to embed FDEs into companies that are working on "complex problems in demanding environments."
Amazon has poured billions of dollars into both Anthropic and OpenAI, but Amazon executives have not been shy about their ambitions to compete directly with the labs in some areas. A spokesperson for AWS said the company expects to have the opportunity to work with the FDE companies from OpenAI and Anthropic, and it will share more details about its partner programs in the near future.
Organizations including the Allen Institute, the National Basketball Association, Ricoh and the National Football League are already working with AWS FDEs, according to the company. Vasquez said companies in highly regulated industries with diverse datasets will be the next group of adopters.
"This is for customers that are really looking at ways to evolve their workflows," Vasquez said.
Amazon is highlighting the fuel savings benefits of Prime membership with a limited-time promotion that offers 50 cents per gallon off one fuel purchase over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
The promotion runs from Thursday to Sunday (July 2 to 5), the company said in a Tuesday (June 30) press release.
To participate in the limited-time offer, Prime members can link their Amazon account to bp’s fueling app, earnify; visit one of 7,500 bp, Amoco, and participating ampm and Thorntons locations across the United States; and enter their phone number or use the earnify app.
Members who have added a family member to their Prime account via Amazon Family can apply the limited-time promotion to two fuel transactions. Each member must have their own earnify account, and each can make one fuel purchase under the promotion, according to the release.
Beyond this promotion, Prime members can save 10 cents per gallon year-round at the participating gas stations. To use this benefit, members must activate it once to connect their Prime account with their earnify account.
“They can simply begin redeeming at the pump by inputting their phone number or linked payment method,” the release said. “Alternately, members can redeem at the pump with the free earnify app by selecting their location and pump they are using. And with earnify, Prime members can find even more ways to save on fuel or in-store.”
Amazon added fuel savings of 10 cents per gallon at the participating gas stations as a benefit of Prime membership in October 2024.
PYMNTS reported at the time that the move signified a strategic effort to increase the value of Prime membership amid rising fuel prices and heightened competition.
Rival retailer Walmart had introduced similar fuel saving in its Walmart+ loyalty program four years earlier and increased the discounts in 2022.
Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime, said in an October 2024 press release: “We’re constantly looking to add more value for Prime members and perhaps the broadest and most popular additional benefit we could offer is fuel savings—we’re excited to give this to Prime members.”
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “When the Drive Isn’t Worth the Pay: How Fuel Costs Reshape Who Can Afford to Work“ found that transportation costs are now shaping labor availability, job reliability and worker financial health.
In a note released Monday, the firm sees the combination of stronger June retail data and a 20% price increase on select AWS GPU workloads as setting up a cleaner second-half growth story for the stock.
AMZN stock is moving. See the chart and price action here. Prime Day DeliversAdobe Analytics data show U.S. online retail spend during the Prime Day window at roughly $26.4 billion, up 9% year over year, a result that lines up with Bank of America’s expectation for mid-single-digit global GMV growth as some international events move into the third quarter.
Discounts were broadly similar to last year, but Numerator data flagged an 11% drop in average order value on Amazon and softer satisfaction scores, pointing to a customer shift toward everyday essentials and grocery rather than big-ticket items.
Even with smaller baskets, BofA still expects Amazon’s North America retail segment to slightly beat Street estimates for about 14% year-over-year growth.
The catch for near-term traders is timing. Bank of America estimates around $7 billion to $8 billion of sales likely shifted into the second quarter from the third quarter due to this year’s Prime Day schedule, creating potential noise around Amazon’s Q3 outlook even if full-year fundamentals remain intact.
AWS Price HikeOn the cloud side, Amazon quietly announced a roughly 20% price increase effective July 1 for EC2 Capacity Blocks tied to GPU-heavy machine-learning workloads, following a prior 15% hike in January.
Bank of America’s work suggests effective prices paid by customers have already risen from 2022 trough levels, and the new adjustment should add an estimated 1–2 percentage points to second-half AWS growth.
Beyond core capacity, the firm points to ramping commitments from OpenAI and Anthropic on AWS infrastructure, reinforcing a view that Amazon is leaning into AI demand with greater pricing discipline.
BofA flags some risks including tougher competition from offline and local retailers, cloud share battles in advanced AI and heavy AWS investment that could pressure margins if macro conditions soften.
Still, with solid Prime Day demand and AWS asserting pricing power in AI workloads, Amazon’s stock remains a key name to watch as the market balances short-term guidance noise against a strengthening multi-year thesis.
AMZN Stock Price Activity: Amazon stock was down 0.86% at $238.07 at the time of publication Tuesday, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Over the past month, AMZN has declined about 10.6% versus a 1.6% decline in the S&P 500 and is up roughly 3% year-to-date compared to the index’s 8.4% gain.
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This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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Not all businesses are at the same stage of their life cycles. Some companies offer a more exciting opportunity to investors. They are able to quickly increase their sales and profits, most likely resulting from powerful tailwinds pushing them forward.
Along the same vein, here's my top growth stock to buy in July and hold forever.
Image source: Getty Images.
Amazon (AMZN 0.29%) is an excellent choice for investors who want to add more growth potential to their portfolios. In the past five years, the company's revenue and operating cash flow rose 67% and 121%, respectively. According to analyst consensus estimates, the business will exceed $1 trillion in sales in 2028.
Investors have known that this company benefits from e-commerce penetration. It's also registering soaring advertising revenue. And it has a position in autonomous driving and the space economy.
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However, the most exciting segment is Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is an industry-leading cloud computing platform that posted 28% year-over-year revenue growth and a fantastic 38% operating margin in the first quarter (ended March 31). It has gained from enterprises moving their IT workloads off-premises.
The success of AWS, more recently and going forward, will be propelled by the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. As a so-called hyperscaler, Amazon builds the data centers that power AI capabilities for its cloud customers. That demand can impact the company's overall growth for a very long time.
Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Prime members can save $0.50 per gallon on fuel during the Fourth of July weekend, plus savings on barbecue grocery items like grilling meats under $10, summer produce under $4, and party-size snacks and frozen treats starting at $2.
Prime Access members will receive an exclusive $5 monthly grocery credit from July through September, applied automatically at checkout on orders of $25 or more—up to $15 in grocery savings over the summer to help households unlock the convenience of fast, free delivery on everyday essential grocery items.
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) today introduced new summer savings for Prime members just in time for the Fourth of July, including $0.50 per gallon fuel savings, timely savings on barbecue grocery items alongside free Same-Day Delivery in eligible areas, and an exclusive monthly grocery credit for Prime Access members.
"Summer is a time for making memories, and Prime is here to make the entertaining more affordable," said Carmen Nestares, vice president, North America Prime and Marketing Tech. "Prime delivers unmatched savings every day, and this July 4 holiday we’re excited to introduce $0.50 per gallon fuel savings, low prices on everything you need to set up the summer spread, and a monthly savings boost to carry Prime Access families through the summer fun."
Fuel Your Fourth of July Travel
Tens of millions of Americans are expected to hit the road during the Fourth of July weekend, and Prime members can enjoy extra fuel savings. Prime, Prime Access, and Prime for Young Adults members can save $0.50 per gallon on one fuel purchase during the Fourth of July weekend, July 2 to 5, at more than 7,500 bp, Amoco, and participating ampm and Thorntons locations across the U.S. Every day throughout the year, Prime members enjoy fuel savings of $0.10 per gallon, and households can double the savings across two transactions with Amazon Family. Members can link their membership with the bp loyalty account, earnify, to start saving on every fill-up. Visit amazon.com/fuelsavings to learn more and get started. Terms apply.
More in Your Grocery Cart, Less at Checkout
Prime members enjoy great value across Same-Day Delivery, Whole Foods Market, and Amazon Fresh every day and every season, and when it's time to set up the Fourth of July spread, Prime members in eligible areas can order perishable groceries fast and free at everyday low prices with Same-Day Delivery on orders over $25. Today, members in more than 2,300 cities and towns can get fresh groceries, alongside electronics, books, pantry staples, snacks, and everyday household essentials like paper towels and toothpaste, within hours. And with thousands of grocery items displaying the Freshness Guarantee badge on Amazon.com, customers can shop with confidence knowing their perishable groceries will arrive as expected, or Amazon will make it right.
Savings for the Summer Spread
When shopping for groceries on Amazon, Prime members can find everyday low prices across the widest selection, with prices that meet or beat other major retailers. Members can load up on all the barbecue essentials for their summer celebrations in one cart, from grilling meats to frozen treats, for less than $20. That includes:
Entertaining Essentials Starting at $2: Stock-up on party-size Ruffles and Lay's chips, Amazon Grocery ready-to-serve potato salad, frozen treats like Talenti gelato and So Delicious vegan ice cream, and Ghirardelli intense dark chocolate and Jet-Puffed marshmallows.Summer Produce Under $4: Brighten up the table with Wonderful Seedless Lemons and sweet corn.Grilling Meats Under $10: Fire up the grill with Amazon Grocery chicken thighs, Amazon Grocery 85% lean ground beef burgers, and Ball Park Classic Hot Dogs.Sweeten the deal with online and in-store savings from Whole Foods Market. From July 1 to July 7, Prime members can enjoy 50% off ice cream and frozen treats, including products from Van Leeuwen, So Delicious, and Jeni’s.
Prime Access-Exclusive Grocery Savings
Prime Access provides eligible government assistance recipients and income-verified customers with the full Prime experience, discounted at more than 50% off the monthly price. This summer, Prime Access members can look forward to added grocery savings and convenience.
From July to September, Prime Access members will receive an exclusive $5 credit at the start of each month, applied automatically at checkout on eligible orders of $25 or more. That's up to $15 in grocery savings over the summer. The credit applies to eligible everyday essential grocery items available on Amazon.com, including breakfast, baby foods, pantry staples, snacks, beverages, and more.
Prime Access members can head to Amazon Access to explore programs that make shopping on Amazon even more affordable. There, Prime Access members can use SNAP payment methods on EBT-eligible items from Amazon.com, Amazon Fresh, and Whole Foods Market where available. That includes Summer EBT, a federal program providing grocery benefits to families with school-age children during the summer months, helping bridge the gap when school meal programs are not available.
Join Prime Today
Every day, Prime members enjoy Same-Day and Next-Day Delivery on tens of millions of items, access to exclusive deals and shopping events like Prime Day, Alexa+, award-winning content with Prime Video, ad-free listening with Amazon Music, healthcare and prescription savings, and so much more. Anyone can join Prime for $14.99 per month or $139 per year or start a free 30-day trial if eligible at amazon.com/prime.
Government assistance recipients and income-verified customers can try Prime Access for 30 days, then pay $6.99 per month. Prime Access includes all of Prime’s benefits plus the exclusive monthly grocery credit. Verify eligibility at amazon.com/getprimeaccess. Eligible new higher-education students and 18- to 24-year-olds can try Prime for Young Adults for six months at $0, then pay $7.49/month or $69/year. Sign up at amazon.com/youngadult.
About Prime
Prime provides the best value because it bundles savings, convenience, and entertainment into a single membership. In the U.S., that includes more than 300 million items across over 35 categories with free Prime shipping, including tens of millions of items available with Same-Day or Next-Day Delivery, and free Same-Day Delivery on grocery orders over $25 in most areas. Prime members enjoy added savings and convenience with discounts on 1-hour and 2-hour delivery on fresh groceries and everyday essentials from Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh, 1-hour and 3-hour delivery on over 90,000 items available on Amazon.com in select cities and towns, and where available ultra-fast delivery in about 30 minutes or less on fresh groceries and everyday essentials with Amazon Now. Prime members also enjoy exclusive deals and shopping events like Prime Day, movies, shows, and live sports with Prime Video, ad-free listening with Amazon Music, cloud gaming with Amazon Luna, savings across healthcare, prescription medications, restaurant delivery, and fuel, and Alexa+. Prime members can also share a broad range of benefits with others in their household with Amazon Family. Anyone can join Prime for $14.99 per month or $139 per year or start a free 30-day trial if eligible at amazon.com/prime. Amazon ensures Prime is accessible by offering discounted memberships to higher-education students and young adults ages 18-24 with Prime for Young Adults, as well as qualifying government assistance recipients and income-verified customers with Prime Access.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
Amazon (AMZN) is facing fresh legal pressure on 2 fronts, agreeing to pay $2.25 million to settle a U.S. FTC case while also facing a lawsuit in Australia over
Shares of Amazon.com (AMZN +3.23%) and Alphabet (GOOGL +4.79%)(GOOG +4.94%) climbed on Monday, following bullish developments in the cloud industry.
Image source: Getty Images.
Investors cheer Amazon's pricing power Reports of price increases at Amazon Web Services (AWS) were taken as an indication of strong demand for cloud computing services. Amazon is reportedly raising prices by up to 20% for access to advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by the likes of Nvidia.
AWS is one of Amazon's highest-margin business lines and a key driver of its earnings growth. Price hikes should help Amazon offset the surging costs of memory chips and other artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, thereby preserving its enviable profit margins.
Price increases also suggest that demand for AI and other cloud workloads could be even higher than investors expect.
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Alphabet makes its debut Amazon's gains also bode well for Alphabet. Google Cloud has been growing even faster than AWS in recent quarters, albeit from a smaller revenue base. If AWS is enjoying strong demand for its cloud services, Google likely is as well.
Alphabet's stock price might also have received a boost from its inclusion in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The tech giant replaced Verizon in the venerable stock index on Monday.
Although ETFs and mutual funds that track the Dow aren't as popular as those that track the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100 indexes, Alphabet's inclusion in the DJIA likely spurred some buying that bolstered its stock price.
Joe Tenebruso has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Australia's competition regulator is taking Amazon's Australian unit to court, alleging that unfair terms in its Prime subscription contracts allowed the company to introduce advertising to its video streaming platform.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in a statement on Tuesday that Amazon Australia allegedly used unfair terms between November 2023 and August 2025 to make changes to Prime Video contracts.
The contracts, said the ACCC, required more than a million annual Prime subscribers in the country to accept advertising or pay an additional AU$2.99 ($2.05) per month for an ad-free option when Amazon introduced ads into Prime Video service in July 2024, with no entitlement to a refund if they chose to cancel their subscription.
"We allege that Amazon AU included multiple unfair terms in its contracts with Australian annual Prime subscribers, and it then relied on some of these terms to bring ads onto Amazon Prime Video," said the regulator's chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
The ACCC is seeking consumer redress, penalties, costs, declarations and other orders.
The Amazon local unit's contracts were investigated by the regulator after it received reports from consumers following the company's introduction of ads to Prime Video in July 2024, the ACCC said in a statement.
"We are reviewing the case filed by the ACCC in detail. We have cooperated with the ACCC throughout its investigation and remain focused on providing the best experience for our Australian customers," an Amazon Australia spokesperson told CNBC in an email when asked for comment.
The news comes after Amazon's shares rose 3.2% Monday amid reports of stronger-than-expected consumer demand during the company's extended Prime Day event in the U.S. According to data firm Adobe Analytics, U.S. online shoppers spent more than $26.4 billion from June 23 through June 26.
A downtown building is wrapped in Amazon Prime advertising ahead of Comic-Con International, in San Diego, California, U.S. July 22, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
SummaryCompaniesAustralian competition watchdog sues Amazon's local unitACCC alleges Amazon unit used unfair Prime Video contract termsACCC seeking declarations, penalties, among other ordersJune 30 (Reuters) - Australia's competition regulator said on Tuesday it has taken Amazon's (AMZN.O), opens new tab Australian unit to court, alleging its Prime subscription contracts contained unfair terms that allowed the company to add advertising to its video streaming platform.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleged that between November 2023 and August 2025, Amazon Australia used unfair Prime Video contract terms to make negative changes for over 1 million annual subscribers without offering compensation.
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"We allege that Amazon AU included multiple unfair terms in its contracts with Australian annual Prime subscribers, and it then relied on some of these terms to bring ads onto Amazon Prime Video," said ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
After July 2024, subscribers who wanted to maintain ad-free streaming had to pay an additional A$2.99 per month. This was despite annual subscribers already having paid A$79 ($54.40) upfront for the service, the ACCC added in its statement.
The regulator also alleged that Amazon.com Services LLC was knowingly concerned in the Australian unit's conduct, adding that the former was involved in drafting the Australian contracts that contained the terms.
The ACCC is seeking declarations, penalties, consumer redress, costs and other orders.
In an emailed response to Reuters, a spokesperson for Amazon Australia said the firm is "reviewing the case filed by the ACCC in detail" and had cooperated with the regulator throughout the investigation.
The ACCC investigated Amazon's local unit's contracts after receiving consumer reports about the introduction of ads to Prime Video in 2024, according to its statement.
($1 = 1.4522 Australian dollars)
Reporting by Shivangi Lahiri in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Kumar Tanishk; Editing by Maju Samuel and Vijay Kishore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
The Nasdaq is up 1.58%, while the S&P 500 is up 1.23% and Consumer Discretionary is leading with a 2.2% gain.
Amazon drew attention after its Prime Day event drove $26.4 billion in U.S. online spending, while analysts said discounts and stretched consumers shaped the sales surge.
• Amazon.com stock is among today’s top performers. Why is AMZN stock up today?
Prime Day Spending Tops Adobe EstimateAdobe Analytics said U.S. online spending across retailers reached $26.4 billion during Amazon’s four-day Prime Day event from June 23 through June 26, narrowly topping its earlier $26.3 billion estimate.
Adobe said shoppers bought electronics, toys, appliances, personal care products, apparel, kids’ items and everyday essentials.
Discounts stayed close to last year’s levels, with electronics and apparel averaging 24% markdowns and toys averaging 20%. Adobe also said buy-now-pay-later options accounted for 6.6% of all orders.
Experts Flag Discounts and Consumer FatigueCFRA Research analyst Arun Sundaram told Reuters on Saturday that tax refunds may have helped shoppers spend on discretionary categories during the event.
IRS data showed average tax refunds rose 11.1% to $3,462 in 2026, though Sundaram said that boost will not help most shoppers during the fall and winter shopping seasons.
Alix Partners retail managing director Sonia Lapinsky told Reuters that Prime Day buying showed consumers were stocking up on products they already planned to buy. She said the event pointed to a tired consumer who is not necessarily spending more, but is trying to stretch money through better deals and discounts.
Technical AnalysisAmazon is trading right on top of its 20-day trend gauges (near the $242.60 20-day SMA and $242.71 20-day EMA), which often acts like a "decision zone" for short-term direction. The bigger picture is more mixed: the stock is trading 5.4% below its 50-day SMA ($255.98) but remains 3.1% above its 100-day SMA ($234.93) and 4% above its 200-day SMA ($232.83).
The longer-term trend backdrop remains constructive following the Golden Cross in May, but the shorter-term structure has been choppy, with the 20-day SMA below the 50-day SMA (a bearish alignment).
Earnings & Analyst OutlookLooking further out, the next major catalyst for the stock arrives with the July 30 (estimated) earnings report.
EPS Estimate: $1.81 (Up from $1.68 year-over-year) Revenue Estimate: $196.03 billion (Up from $167.70 illion YoY) Analyst Consensus & Recent Actions: The stock carries a Buy rating with an average price target of $320.86. Recent analyst moves include:
Truist Securities: Buy (Raises target to $320 on May 29) Wells Fargo: Overweight (Lowers target to $312 on May 20) TD Cowen: Buy (Maintains target to $350 on May 12) Top ETF ExposureSignificance: Because Amazon carries such a heavy weight in these funds, any significant inflows or outflows will likely trigger automatic buying or selling of the stock.
AMZN Price ActionAMZN Stock Price Activity: Amazon.com shares were up 4.24% at $242.56 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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Another challenge to the Amazon Kindle-Goodreads book tracking empire has emerged.
On Monday, the reading tracker StoryGraph teamed up with Rakuten’s Kobo, the maker of a more open eReader (and Kindle alternative), allowing book lovers to automatically track their reading habits.
The integration was first announced in May, and is now live for all Kobo account-based content.
This makes the Kobo the first eReader to integrate with StoryGraph’s book community platform, and serves as another way to chip away at Amazon’s dominance in the digital books market. Traditionally, Amazon has managed to retain its readers by offering low prices on books and ebooks and combining that with a robust online reading community and social network, Goodreads.
While many Goodreads competitors emerged over the years, few have been able to establish a solid footprint because they lacked the ability to integrate with customers’ e-reading devices, as Goodreads does with Kindle devices.
The StoryGraph-Kobo integration changes that, as it will now automatically sync a user’s reading progress with their StoryGraph account. That means when you finish a book on your Kobo eReader, it will automatically be marked as “Read” on StoryGraph, keeping your reading stats up-to-date. The feature will work with both ebooks and audiobooks, the companies said, and it works with any Kobo device and Kobo’s apps.
Book trackers like StoryGraph are popular because they offer an easy way for people to keep a record of their reading history, favorite books, and offer ways to discover recommendations based on what others are reading. As StoryGraph’s name implies, its analytics tend to go deeper, offering readers detailed charts about their reading moods, pace, and more, to improve reading habits.
It also offers an online community where you can participate in reading challenges and join book clubs, while staying motivated to read by earning “streaks.” (Typically, we don’t like addictive gamification measures in social apps, but for encouraging reading, we’ll make an exception.)
Nadia Odunayo, Founder & CEO, The StoryGraphImage Credits:StoryGraph Founded by Black British engineer Nadia Odunayo and CTO Rob Frelow in 2019, StoryGraph began as a side project and didn’t take in outside funding. It has since evolved into a community of over 5 million readers. The Kobo integration will now put the app in front of the eReader maker’s 12 million users in 190 countries.
Kobo and StoryGraph aren’t alone in capitalizing on the cultural revival of reading, driven by online communities like #booktok and reading apps. According to Pew Research, around three-in-ten U.S. adults (31%) reported reading an ebook in the past year, up from 17% in 2011.
The startup Everand, which offers a marketplace for ebooks and audiobooks, also recently bought the digital book community app maker Fable to offer a similar integration — without the hardware. (Perhaps Kobo could be eyeing StoryGraph for its own M&A in the future, we have to wonder?)
The new Kobo-StoryGraph integration doesn’t require a subscription, though the StoryGraph app does offer a $5 per month Plus subscription that adds deeper stats, filters, custom charts, and comparison tools.
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Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.
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