Amazon ve 2. čtvrtletí zvýšil tržby o 20 % na 200,6 miliardy USD a AWS vzrostlo o 37 % na 42,2 miliardy USD. Akcie po výsledcích v pátek stouply asi o 15 %.
Amazon (AMZN +15.32%) reported its second-quarter results on Thursday afternoon, and the release carried a figure that can scare investors off: Free cash flow for the trailing 12 months came in at an outflow of $7.6 billion. A year earlier, that figure was an inflow of $18.2 billion.
The market barely blinked. Shares of the e-commerce and cloud computing giant closed up about 15% Friday, at around $271 -- near the top of their 52-week range.
So investors watched a company report negative free cash flow and bid the stock up double digits. I don't think they're wrong.
The same cash flow statement that shows the burn also shows that the operations funding it have rarely looked stronger. And the segment the money is flowing into is accelerating.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Where the cash went The burn isn't coming from the business. Amazon's operating cash flow rose 33% year over year to $161.4 billion for the trailing 12 months.
What changed is the spending. Purchases of property and equipment, net of proceeds, totaled $169 billion over the same period, up 64% year over year. In the second quarter alone, capital spending reached $54.2 billion, compared with $32.2 billion in the year-ago quarter.
The company said in its earnings release that the increase mostly reflects its investments in artificial intelligence (AI).
And the plan is getting bigger. CEO Andy Jassy said on the earnings call that the company now expects about $220 billion of capital spending in 2026, up from the roughly $200 billion it projected earlier in the year, pointing to rising memory costs.
And the trend has been building for a while. Amazon's trailing-12-month free cash flow has now declined for six straight quarters, stepping down from a peak above $38 billion in late 2024 to this week's negative figure. Operating cash flow grew year over year in every one of those quarters. In other words, the business kept producing more cash, and the build-out simply grew faster.
Importantly, the spending isn't happening at a struggling company. Net sales rose 20% year over year to $200.6 billion in the second quarter, up from 13% growth in the year-ago period. The growth was broad, too. North America sales rose 16%, international sales rose 15%, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue jumped 37%.
What the spending is building AWS is where the payoff shows up most visibly. The cloud computing segment's 37% year-over-year growth, to $42.2 billion, was its fastest in 18 quarters and its fifth straight quarter of acceleration, up from 17% growth in the year-ago period.
Jassy said in the release that "AWS is booming," noting that the company's AI and chips businesses "each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion."
The growth is getting more profitable, too. AWS operating income rose about 64% year over year to $16.6 billion, and the segment's operating margin expanded to 39.4% from 32.9% a year ago. AWS produced about 21% of Amazon's net sales in the quarter but roughly 60% of its $27.5 billion in total operating income, which itself grew 43%. That mix is why I think the market was willing to look straight past the cash flow line.
However, investors shouldn't read too much into Amazon's reported net income of $62.6 billion, or $5.75 per share. That figure includes $53.4 billion of non-operating income, primarily from the company's investments in AI company Anthropic.
It's a markup on an investment, not cash from selling things. The profit engine to watch is operating income.
Today's Change
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At about $271, the stock trades at about 27 times forward earnings estimates. For a company growing revenue 20% year over year with operating income up 43%, that's arguably a reasonable price -- not cheap, but far from egregious.
Sure, guidance implies slower growth in the third quarter, with net sales of $197 billion to $202 billion, up 9% to 12% year over year. But the company said the timing of Prime Day shaved nearly 4 percentage points off that comparison. And its operating income guidance of $22.5 billion to $26.5 billion compares with $17.4 billion a year earlier.
Ultimately, the market is paying for AWS, and AWS keeps earning it. I like the stock, even after a double-digit pop.
Of course, the math can turn. If AWS's acceleration stalls while capital spending keeps climbing, the negative free cash flow could start to matter a lot more, and I'd rethink my position. The spending may also stay elevated longer than investors expect. But those are risks to watch, not reasons to sell.
Amazon čelí žalobě spotřebitelů kvůli údajnému klamání o udržitelnosti mořských plodů prodávaných na platformě. Žaloba míří na tvrzení jako „dolphin safe“ a „sustainable“ u tuňáka, lososa i dalších produktů.
Amazon logo outside an Amazon warehouse in Manchester, Britain, October 28, 2025. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
SummaryCompaniesLawsuit challenges claims such as 'dolphin safe,' 'sustainable,' 'wild caught'Amazon allegedly misled consumers into buying or overpaying for tuna, salmonJuly 31 (Reuters) - Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab was sued on Friday by consumers who accused the retailer of misrepresenting the environmental benefits of seafood sold on its platform, a practice known as greenwashing.
In a proposed class action in Seattle federal court, consumers said labels containing phrases such as "dolphin safe," "responsibly sourced," "sustainable," "wild caught" and "MSC Certified Sustainable Seafood” misled them into believing Amazon's seafood sourcing causes minimal harm to oceans and the environment.
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The consumers called such representations unsubstantiated or materially false because most fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, and some vessels obscure their whereabouts by disabling electronic devices known as transponders. They also said at least one-fifth of imported wild-caught seafood is not responsibly or sustainably sourced.
"Amazon nevertheless markets the greenwashed seafood products using broad sustainability messaging without providing disclosures necessary to prevent consumer deception," the complaint said.
The Seattle-based company is the second-largest U.S. grocer with more than $150 billion of gross sales in 2025, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said on an April 29 conference call with analysts.
Amazon and lawyers who represent it in other consumer class actions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The company faces frequent lawsuits over products sold on its platform, including by outside sellers.
BUMBLE BEE, CHICKEN OF THE SEA, STARKISTThe lawsuit targets dozens of tuna, salmon and other seafood products under brands including Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, StarKist and Amazon's own 365 by Whole Foods Market.
Plaintiffs led by Madeleine Rogow of Los Angeles and Adam Sorkin of Chicago said they would not have bought or would have paid less for their seafood had Amazon disclosed its "true sustainable nature."
The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages and restitution for people in the United States for Amazon's alleged violations of Washington consumer protection laws.
The respective parents of Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea and StarKist — Taiwan's FCF, Thai Union Group (TU.BK), opens new tab and South Korea's Dongwon Industries (006040.KS), opens new tab — are not defendants in Friday's lawsuit.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by David Gaffen
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Amazon uzavřel investici 50 miliard USD do OpenAI, kterou obě firmy oznámily v únoru. AWS se má stát exkluzivním třetím cloudovým poskytovatelem pro program OpenAI Frontier.
Amazon completed a $50 billion investment in OpenAI that the two companies announced in February.
Amazon said in a Friday (July 31) filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that after entering into the agreement and investing $15 billion during the first quarter, it invested another $13.7 billion in the second quarter and the remaining $21.3 billion of its commitment sometime after June 30.
OpenAI announced Feb. 27 that it raised new funding that included $50 billion from Amazon. The company said that as part of the deal, Amazon Web Services (AWS) would become the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI’s Frontier program and OpenAI would expand prior infrastructure agreements with AWS that could total $100 billion over eight years.
In its own Feb. 27 announcement of its investment in OpenAI, Amazon said the $50 billion investment would start with an initial $15 billion, which would be followed by another $35 billion within months “when certain conditions are met.”
The Information reported in February that those conditions could include whether OpenAI goes public or if it achieves artificial general intelligence (AGI), a term for AI that functions at the same level as humans.
In a Friday report that flagged Amazon’s SEC filing saying it completed the investment, The Information noted that OpenAI has not gone public and said that Amazon did not specify why it made the remaining investment.
It was reported Wednesday (July 29) that OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT, is approaching 1 billion weekly active users. While this milestone came seven months later than the AI startup had initially projected, it made ChatGPT one of the fastest-growing apps in the history of the internet, as it achieved this scale in under four years.
On Thursday (July 30), OpenAI cut the price of two of its models and accelerated the performance of a third model while leaving its price unchanged. The company said that it made these changes to improve the models’ performance per dollar across enterprise workloads.
“We are building a resilient infrastructure portfolio and matching each workload to the systems best suited to run it,” OpenAI said in a blog post. “That approach supports both ends of the price-performance curve.”
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Alphabet a Amazon ukázaly, že jejich vlastní čipy jsou reálnou alternativou k Nvidii. Google Cloud díky TPUs zvedl provozní marži na 35,6 % a AWS díky Trainium a Gravitonu rostl o 37 %.
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) posted Q2 FY2026 results built around the same idea: their custom chips are now real Nvidia alternatives. Google leaned on TPUs powering a 82% Cloud surge. Amazon leaned on Trainium and Graviton driving 37% AWS growth, the fastest in 18 quarters. Two silicon playbooks, two very different customer bases.
TPUs Carry Google Cloud. Trainium Carries AWS. Google Cloud hit $24.77 billion in Q2, with operating margin jumping to 35.6% from 20.7%. That margin lift is the TPU story in one number: owning the silicon means owning the cost curve. Sundar Pichai told investors Google now offers “the industry’s broadest range of accelerators from Google and NVIDIA”, and notably began recognizing revenue from TPU system sales delivered into customer data centers for the first time.
Amazon went the other way. AWS reached $42.23 billion at a 39.4% operating margin, and Andy Jassy said “our AI and Chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion” with triple-digit growth. Graviton5 shipped with up to 25% better compute performance than Graviton4, and Trainium capacity is being leased in bulk to Anthropic and OpenAI.
Cost Leader vs. Volume Leader Lens Alphabet Amazon Silicon TPU, Axion CPU Trainium, Graviton, Nitro Primary customer Internal Gemini + Cloud enterprises External AI labs on AWS 2026 CapEx guide $195B to $205B ~$200B Cloud backlog $514B Not disclosed Google’s edge is efficiency. Pichai flagged that Chrome engineers are “on track to accelerate delivery by eight times” using their own models on their own chips. Amazon’s edge is distribution. Bedrock now hosts Claude Opus 5, GPT-5.6, Gemma 4 and Grok 4.3, and customers spent more on Bedrock in Q2 than in all prior quarters combined. One monetizes silicon through margin. The other monetizes it through rented capacity.
The Next Test Is Free Cash Flow Both bets are expensive. Alphabet burned $44.92 billion of CapEx in Q2 and posted negative $5.86 billion of free cash flow, with the buyback suspended. Amazon spent $54.21 billion and TTM free cash flow turned negative at $7.6 billion. I want to see TPU external revenue ramp in 2027, and I want Trainium bookings from OpenAI and Anthropic to translate into AWS margin, not just top line.
Why I Lean Toward Google for Silicon Efficiency, Amazon for Silicon Distribution If you want the cheapest tokens in the industry, Google’s TPU stack looks like the better long-term asset. Cloud margin nearly doubled year over year, and shares rose 5.03% in the past week as investors digested the raise. If you want the widest customer roster leasing custom chips, Amazon wins. AWS jumped 3.9% on earnings day, and the Anthropic and OpenAI Trainium commitments give it a commercial moat Google does not have yet. For investors weighing exposure, the trade-off is efficiency versus distribution, and free cash flow recovery by mid-2027 will be the key checkpoint for both names.
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ToplineJeff Bezos on Friday became the world’s third-richest person once again, reclaiming the ranking from Google co-founder Sergey Brin as Amazon’s stock accelerated at its fastest pace in four years, following a hotter-than-expected earnings report.
A better-than-expected jump in cloud revenue boosted Amazon’s stock.
Getty Images
Key FactsShares of Amazon surged about 14% shortly after trading opened on Friday, pacing the stock’s largest single-day gain since April 24, 2015 (14.1%).
That burst followed Amazon’s quarterly earnings on Thursday, in which the firm reported $206.6 billion in revenue boosted by a 37% year-over-year surge in cloud sales to $42.2 billion, exceeding Wall Street’s estimates of $197 billion and $40.5 billion, respectively, according to FactSet.
Amazon even raised its spending forecast this year to $220 billion, up from $200 billion, as CEO Andy Jassy said a majority of Amazon’s capital expenditures would go toward matching demand for AI, noting the firm was “unusually well-positioned for this AI inflection.”
Tech firms have been increasingly scrutinized as they raise their projected spending to meet demand for AI, but Forrester analyst Tracy Woo wrote in a note Thursday that Amazon’s cloud sales growth was a “clear indicator” that its investments are “meeting market demand rather than outpacing it.”
Forbes ValuationSurging Amazon shares added $25 billion to Bezos’ net worth, estimated at $271.5 billion as of Friday morning. That ranks the Amazon founder as the world’s third-richest person between Google co-founders Larry Page ($279.3 billion) and Brin ($257.6 billion).
tangentApple shares plunged 9% after the firm issued weaker-than-expected guidance for its current quarter, citing “supply constraints” as it now anticipates revenue growth between 9% and 11%, below estimates of 12%. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who spoke in his last earnings call at the helm of the firm, said Apple expects to “pay even higher memory costs” amid a global memory shortage. “If you look beyond September, we see the market pricing for memory continuing to increase, which could drive an increasing impact on our business,” Cook said.
key backgroundBezos and Brin have swapped spots among the world’s wealthiest people multiple times in recent weeks, as investors weigh incoming earnings reports and any signs of weakness in the global AI market. Most of the focus has centered on AI strategy from mega-cap firms, like Amazon, as they navigate an accelerating market and a shrinking memory trade. Earlier this week, Meta shares tanked while Microsoft rallied 15%, as traders took sides on either firm’s approach to their AI products.
further readingForbesSergey Brin Rises To 3rd Richest—Despite Google Stock PlungeBy Mary Whitfill Roeloffs
Financiere des Professionnels Fonds d investissement inc. grew its stake in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) by 64.6% in the 1st quarter, according to its most recent filing with the SEC. The firm owned 142,478 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock after buying an additional 55,938 shares during the quarter. Amazon.com accounts for approximately 1.7% of Financiere des Professionnels Fonds d investissement inc.’s portfolio, making the stock its 10th biggest position. Financiere des Professionnels Fonds d investissement inc.’s holdings in Amazon.com were worth $29,674,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.
Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Amazon.com during the 4th quarter worth approximately $32,868,735,000. Auto Owners Insurance Co raised its holdings in shares of Amazon.com by 27,376.7% in the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 98,448,885 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $2,272,397,000 after purchasing an additional 98,090,585 shares in the last quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP raised its holdings in shares of Amazon.com by 20,598.0% in the 4th quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP now owns 87,982,814 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $20,308,193,000 after purchasing an additional 87,557,736 shares in the last quarter. Nuveen LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Amazon.com during the 1st quarter worth $11,674,091,000. Finally, Cardano Risk Management B.V. grew its stake in shares of Amazon.com by 879.4% during the fourth quarter. Cardano Risk Management B.V. now owns 27,862,400 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $6,431,199,000 after purchasing an additional 25,017,588 shares in the last quarter. 72.20% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.
Insider Buying and Selling In other news, SVP David Zapolsky sold 9,270 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $268.53, for a total value of $2,489,273.10. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president directly owned 41,190 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $11,060,750.70. This represents a 18.37% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Andrew R. Jassy sold 20,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, May 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $263.42, for a total transaction of $5,268,400.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 2,205,766 shares in the company, valued at approximately $581,042,879.72. This trade represents a 0.90% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 135,719 shares of company stock valued at $36,438,002 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 8.90% of the company’s stock.
Amazon.com Stock Up 3.9% AMZN opened at $235.50 on Friday. Amazon.com, Inc. has a one year low of $196.00 and a one year high of $278.56. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27, a quick ratio of 1.01 and a current ratio of 1.18. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.53 trillion, a P/E ratio of 28.17, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.70 and a beta of 1.46. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $245.59 and its 200-day simple moving average is $235.97.
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN – Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, July 30th. The e-commerce giant reported $5.75 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.82 by $3.93. The firm had revenue of $200.61 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $197.03 billion. Amazon.com had a return on equity of 19.92% and a net margin of 12.22%.The business’s revenue was up 19.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $1.68 EPS. Analysts anticipate that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 7.76 EPS for the current year.
Analysts Set New Price Targets AMZN has been the topic of a number of analyst reports. Susquehanna restated a “positive” rating and issued a $325.00 price target (up from $300.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Wolfe Research reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $320.00 price objective (up from $245.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a report on Thursday, April 30th. Sanford C. Bernstein reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $315.00 target price (up from $300.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Morgan Stanley boosted their target price on Amazon.com from $300.00 to $330.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Finally, William Blair reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Thursday, April 9th. Fifty-seven analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and three have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $313.43.
Read Our Latest Research Report on AMZN
More Amazon.com News Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:
Positive Sentiment: AWS growth reaccelerated sharply: Amazon Web Services revenue rose 37% year over year—the fastest growth in several years—beating expectations as enterprise AI spending increased. New arrangements with Meta and OpenAI further support demand for Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. Amazon’s AWS posts fastest growth since 2021 Positive Sentiment: Amazon delivered a broad earnings beat: Second-quarter revenue increased approximately 20% to $200.6 billion, surpassing the $197.0 billion consensus estimate, while EPS of $5.75 exceeded expectations of $1.82. Operating income reached $27.5 billion, and AWS operating profit was approximately $16.6 billion. Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Results Positive Sentiment: Advertising and retail added momentum: Advertising revenue climbed 26% to nearly $20 billion, while Prime Day activity supported the North American e-commerce business. Amazon also said a $600 million tariff refund will be partly passed on to customers. Amazon Thrives On Big Q2 Positive Sentiment: AI strategy is increasingly focused on monetization: Coverage suggests Amazon is emphasizing AWS infrastructure, partnerships and customer access rather than competing exclusively to build the industry’s top proprietary model. This could improve returns on AI spending and reduce the cost of a frontier-model race. Amazon is proving you don’t need the best model Neutral Sentiment: Amazon’s Anthropic investment produced a substantial non-operating gain, boosting reported profitability, but the benefit may be volatile and does not represent recurring operating earnings. Negative Sentiment: Spending and guidance remain investor concerns: Amazon’s planned roughly $200 billion of 2026 capital expenditures is pressuring free cash flow, while its third-quarter revenue outlook of $197 billion to $202 billion is below the approximately $204.6 billion analyst consensus. Reports of costly AI deployment errors add to execution risk. Amazon Contends With Unplanned Overspending on AI Amazon.com Company Profile (Free Report)
Amazon.com, Inc is a diversified technology and retail company best known for its e-commerce marketplace and broad portfolio of consumer and enterprise services. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the company launched as an online bookseller and expanded into a global retail platform that sells products directly to consumers and provides a marketplace for third-party sellers. Over time Amazon has grown beyond retail into areas including cloud computing, digital media, devices and logistics.
Key businesses and offerings include Amazon’s online marketplace and fulfillment services, the Amazon Prime membership program (which bundles expedited shipping with streaming and other benefits), Amazon Web Services (AWS) which supplies on-demand cloud computing and storage to businesses and public-sector customers, and a range of content and advertising services such as Prime Video and Amazon Advertising.
See Also Five stocks we like better than Amazon.com Microsoft Just Flipped the AI Spending Narrative Overnight Qualcomm’s Turnaround Is Working, So Why Is Wall Street Selling? Meta’s Earnings Show Why Wall Street Is Losing Patience With AI Spending Can Starbucks Keep This Turnaround Going? The Latest Results Say Yes Want to see what other hedge funds are holding AMZN? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN – Free Report).
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Gryphon Financial Partners LLC grew its stake in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) by 7.5% in the first quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 73,085 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock after buying an additional 5,125 shares during the period. Amazon.com makes up approximately 1.6% of Gryphon Financial Partners LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 15th biggest position. Gryphon Financial Partners LLC’s holdings in Amazon.com were worth $15,221,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
Several other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Narwhal Capital Management increased its holdings in shares of Amazon.com by 2.3% in the 4th quarter. Narwhal Capital Management now owns 216,606 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $49,997,000 after buying an additional 4,854 shares during the last quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership grew its position in Amazon.com by 21.0% in the fourth quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 24,653,228 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $5,690,463,000 after acquiring an additional 4,275,942 shares in the last quarter. Weaver Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Amazon.com by 13.6% in the fourth quarter. Weaver Capital Management LLC now owns 39,264 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $9,063,000 after acquiring an additional 4,713 shares during the last quarter. Ethos Financial Group LLC raised its position in Amazon.com by 9.6% during the fourth quarter. Ethos Financial Group LLC now owns 36,485 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $8,421,000 after purchasing an additional 3,196 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Culbertson A N & Co. Inc. lifted its stake in Amazon.com by 8.6% during the fourth quarter. Culbertson A N & Co. Inc. now owns 30,444 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $7,027,000 after purchasing an additional 2,412 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 72.20% of the company’s stock.
Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, CEO Douglas J. Herrington sold 1,000 shares of Amazon.com stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, July 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total value of $239,770.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 484,527 shares in the company, valued at approximately $116,175,038.79. This trade represents a 0.21% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, SVP David Zapolsky sold 9,270 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $268.53, for a total value of $2,489,273.10. Following the transaction, the senior vice president owned 41,190 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $11,060,750.70. This represents a 18.37% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 135,719 shares of company stock worth $36,438,002. Insiders own 8.90% of the company’s stock.
Amazon.com Trading Up 3.9% Shares of AMZN opened at $235.50 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.53 trillion, a P/E ratio of 28.17, a PEG ratio of 1.70 and a beta of 1.46. Amazon.com, Inc. has a twelve month low of $196.00 and a twelve month high of $278.56. The company has a quick ratio of 1.01, a current ratio of 1.18 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $245.59 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $235.97.
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 30th. The e-commerce giant reported $5.75 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.82 by $3.93. The firm had revenue of $200.61 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $197.03 billion. Amazon.com had a net margin of 12.22% and a return on equity of 19.92%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 19.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $1.68 earnings per share. On average, research analysts anticipate that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 7.76 EPS for the current year.
Key Headlines Impacting Amazon.com Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:
Positive Sentiment: AWS growth reaccelerated sharply: Amazon Web Services revenue rose 37% year over year—the fastest growth in several years—beating expectations as enterprise AI spending increased. New arrangements with Meta and OpenAI further support demand for Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. Amazon’s AWS posts fastest growth since 2021 Positive Sentiment: Amazon delivered a broad earnings beat: Second-quarter revenue increased approximately 20% to $200.6 billion, surpassing the $197.0 billion consensus estimate, while EPS of $5.75 exceeded expectations of $1.82. Operating income reached $27.5 billion, and AWS operating profit was approximately $16.6 billion. Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Results Positive Sentiment: Advertising and retail added momentum: Advertising revenue climbed 26% to nearly $20 billion, while Prime Day activity supported the North American e-commerce business. Amazon also said a $600 million tariff refund will be partly passed on to customers. Amazon Thrives On Big Q2 Positive Sentiment: AI strategy is increasingly focused on monetization: Coverage suggests Amazon is emphasizing AWS infrastructure, partnerships and customer access rather than competing exclusively to build the industry’s top proprietary model. This could improve returns on AI spending and reduce the cost of a frontier-model race. Amazon is proving you don’t need the best model Neutral Sentiment: Amazon’s Anthropic investment produced a substantial non-operating gain, boosting reported profitability, but the benefit may be volatile and does not represent recurring operating earnings. Negative Sentiment: Spending and guidance remain investor concerns: Amazon’s planned roughly $200 billion of 2026 capital expenditures is pressuring free cash flow, while its third-quarter revenue outlook of $197 billion to $202 billion is below the approximately $204.6 billion analyst consensus. Reports of costly AI deployment errors add to execution risk. Amazon Contends With Unplanned Overspending on AI Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of brokerages recently weighed in on AMZN. KeyCorp set a $335.00 price objective on Amazon.com and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, July 16th. Stifel Nicolaus set a $319.00 price target on shares of Amazon.com and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Oppenheimer boosted their price objective on shares of Amazon.com from $275.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, April 30th. TD Cowen reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $340.00 target price (down from $350.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a report on Wednesday, July 8th. Finally, Scotiabank reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $325.00 price target (up from $275.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Fifty-seven research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and three have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $313.43.
View Our Latest Stock Report on Amazon.com
Amazon.com Company Profile (Free Report)
Amazon.com, Inc is a diversified technology and retail company best known for its e-commerce marketplace and broad portfolio of consumer and enterprise services. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the company launched as an online bookseller and expanded into a global retail platform that sells products directly to consumers and provides a marketplace for third-party sellers. Over time Amazon has grown beyond retail into areas including cloud computing, digital media, devices and logistics.
Key businesses and offerings include Amazon’s online marketplace and fulfillment services, the Amazon Prime membership program (which bundles expedited shipping with streaming and other benefits), Amazon Web Services (AWS) which supplies on-demand cloud computing and storage to businesses and public-sector customers, and a range of content and advertising services such as Prime Video and Amazon Advertising.
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Amazon po výsledcích hospodaření vyskočil v premarketu o 12 %, protože tržby AWS ve 2. čtvrtletí meziročně vzrostly o 37 %. Apple naopak klesl o 7 % kvůli slabému výhledu pro aktuální čtvrtletí.
Amazon shares surged on Friday while Apple dropped as investors reacted starkly differently to their June quarter earnings reports.
Shares of Amazon were 12% higher in premarket trading, while Apple fell 7%. Amazon was nearly 4% higher at Thursday's close while Apple was down by more than 1%.
Both companies reported their June quarter earnings on Thursday with Amazon impressing the market while Apple disappointed.
Apple's earnings, revenue and iPhone sales were all above market expectations, however the company issued weak guidance for the current quarter, citing "supply constraints." Apple said revenue growth in the current quarter will be between 9% and 11%, missing analysts' expectations for 12% growth, according to LSEG.
The company is grappling with a huge shortage of memory, a key component in its devices, as well as competition for chip manufacturing capacity.
This has led Apple to raise prices on the Mac and iPad, and analysts expect an iPhone price rise to come this year.
Amazon, meanwhile, said revenue at its cloud computing business jumped 37% year-on-year in the second quarter, marking the strongest expansion since 2021. Its Amazon Web Services business is closely watched by the market, as this is where the company books most of its sales related to AI. Investors monitor this unit as an indication of the demand Amazon is seeing for its AI products.
Apple and Amazon shares this year.
Amazon shares surged even as the company forecast its capital expenditures to hit $220 billion this year, up from a prior forecast of $200 billion, as it continues to invest in AI infrastructure.
Investors have been scrutinizing spending from Big Tech on AI as concerns grow that these companies are spending ahead of demand. But Amazon's own cloud growth appeared to justify the company's capex.
AWS's strong growth "is a clear indicator that its infrastructure investments are meeting market demand rather than outpacing it," Tracy Woo, principal analyst at Forrester, said in a note on Thursday.
Amazon's stock has been a laggard in 2026 and is up around 4% year-to-date. Apple meanwhile, has risen 23% across the same period. The iPhone maker is partly seen as an alternative trade to the tech players who have been spending heavily, as Apple has not gone on a huge capex expansion journey.
Investors appear to be picking their AI winners during this earnings season, with the stock price moves of tech giants diverging.
On Thursday, Meta sank 8% while Microsoft rallied 15% as investors took a different view on both companies' AI strategies.
Detail of the Amazon Prime streaming app on the screen of an Apple iPad Mini, taken on October 6, 2021. (Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing)
Future Publishing
There is a lot of discussion in the entertainment industry press that every major major SVOD is likely to add free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels to their platform right alongside their original productions and licensed programs.
The biggest rumors along that line center around Netflix, where stories arguing that FAST channels are on the way to that streamer have circulated for months.
But adding those free, ad-supported channels are no guarantee of success, and the latest example of that is in Germany and Austria, where Prime Video is shutting down its “Prime” FAST channel on August 1st, 15 months after their launch.
Prime was backended by Palo Alto, Calif.-based Wurl, which supports more than 4 billion monthly hours of viewing across hundreds of channels and more than 50 streaming platforms worldwide through cloud-based software and scheduling service.
This is just the latest example of the struggles to launch curated FAST channels designed to blend a linear television experience with original SVOD programming. One of the earliest attempts came from Netflix, which launched a series of curated FAST channels on its platform in France.
While Prime Video might still be working out its long-term strategy for curated FAST channels, it continues to aggressively pursue a much-more lucrative business: Prime Video Channels, which offers Prime members access to third-party streaming services through a unified billing process.
Prime Video just announced that it is adding a number of new third-party streaming services to subscribers in Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland. They include HBO Max, SkyShowtime, Apple TV, MGM+, Lionsgate+, MUBI, Hayu, Crunchyroll, Universal+ and BritBox.
“We are thrilled to bring add-on subscriptions to customers in Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland,” said Elisabetta Carruba, Director, Channels, EMEA. “Customers can now enjoy an unrivalled portfolio of series and movies alongside Prime Originals and Exclusives. This is an important step in our goal of becoming the number 1 entertainment destination for our customers across Europe.”
“Expanding our partnership into Norway and Denmark is an important next step as we bring HBO Max to even more Prime Video customers,” added Qaisar Rafique, EVP, Commercial Development EMEA & APAC, at Warner Bros Discovery. “Following successful launches of HBO Max on Amazon Prime Video in territories including the UK, Germany, Australia, and recently New Zealand, this expansion into new territories helps us scale with trusted partners and make it easier for customers to discover and subscribe to the premium entertainment offered by HBO Max on both Prime Video and HBO Max app and website.”
Amazon oznámil investici 1 mld. USD do AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, nového týmu AI inženýrů, kteří budou u zákazníků nasazovat agentní systémy AI během dnů místo měsíců.
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Amazon launches AWS Forward Deployed Engineering with a $1B investment, making it the hottest new job in tech. Marcin Golba/NurPhoto via Getty Images As AI reshapes the tech workforce, Amazon is making a billion-dollar bet that one engineering job is only becoming more valuable.
The company said on Thursday in its second-quarter earnings report that it will invest $1 billion to build AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, a new team of AI engineers who will work directly inside customer organizations to build and launch agentic AI systems in "days rather than months."
Early customers include the Allen Institute, Cox Automotive, the NBA, the NFL, Ricoh, and Southwest Airlines, Amazon said.
The announcement underscores the rapid rise of the forward-deployed engineer, or FDE, a once-niche role that has become one of the hottest jobs in enterprise AI.
"Forward-deployed engineers, or roles that do the equivalent motion, are about to become one of the most in-demand jobs in tech. And one of the most important functions for AI rollouts," Box CEO Aaron Levie wrote on LinkedIn in May.
The hiring boom backs that up. Business Insider previously reported that job postings for forward-deployed engineers have surged since January 2025, according to Indeed data. Companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, Palantir, Stripe, and Google Cloud have all expanded hiring for the role.
The position, popularized by Palantir, embeds engineers directly with customers to build software tailored to their needs. It sits somewhere between software engineering, consulting, and product deployment.
Kanav Bhatnagar, a senior forward-deployed engineer at Rippling, previously told Business Insider that instead of building products from afar, he works directly with clients and learns how their businesses operate before tailoring AI systems to fit their workflows.
"My primary job is listening to customers and understanding their problems," Bhatnagar said, adding that he spends roughly equal time coding and collaborating with product teams.
That hands-on approach has become increasingly important as companies race to deploy generative AI but struggle to move projects from pilot programs into production.
OpenAI created its own forward-deployed engineering team after realizing customers needed more than access to models. Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference last year, international managing director Oliver Jay said the company hired engineers to work directly on customers' largest AI deployments because it was "a really specific way to advance the acceleration of advanced AI into scale production cases."
Job postings on Indeed, analyzed by Business Insider, show that forward-deployed engineering roles typically pay between about $170,000 and $200,000. OpenAI's own job listings, which Business Insider previously reviewed in November 2025, advertise US-based forward-deployed engineering positions paying up to $345,000 in base salary, excluding equity.
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Katherine Li You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Amazon ve čtvrtletí vykázal ostatní příjem před zdaněním ve výši 53,4 miliardy USD, hlavně díky investici do Anthropic. Firma už do ní vložila 13 miliard USD.
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Then-Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky gestures toward Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei during a conference. Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services Amazon's stake in Anthropic is proving to be a massive boon to the world's largest online retailer.
In its latest quarterly earnings report, Amazon reported non-operating pre-tax other income of $53.4 billion, "primarily from our investment in Anthropic."
According to previous financial filings, Amazon has invested $13 billion in Anthropic with the potential for up to $20 billion more.
In June, Anthropic announced that it confidentially filed for an initial public offering, taking the first step toward a highly anticipated IPO. In late May, Anthropic said that it had completed a Series H funding round that valued the company at $965 billion.
Amazon isn't the only Big Tech name sharing in Anthropic's success.
On Wednesday, Microsoft reported its investment in Anthropic had netted a $3.2 billion gain. Microsoft previously invested $5 billion in Anthropic.
Anthropic has seen its valuation skyrocket as the popularity of its Claude family of models pushes the overall generative AI race.
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Brent D. Griffiths You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Brent Griffiths is a senior reporter at Business Insider who covers AI and tech.Previously, he worked at the Washington Post as a researcher on Power Up and the Finance 202. He started his career at Politico where he worked on the web production team and covered breaking news. His passion for covering politics has only grown since he cut his teeth covering the presidential campaign as a student journalist. He's also contributed to the Almanac of American Politics.
Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) came out with quarterly earnings of $1.88 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.83 per share. This compares to earnings of $1.68 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.
This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +2.73%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this online retailer would post earnings of $1.6 per share when it actually produced earnings of $1.56, delivering a surprise of -2.5%.
Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates two times.
Amazon, which belongs to the Zacks Internet - Commerce industry, posted revenues of $200.61 billion for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.77%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $167.7 billion. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates four times over the last four quarters.
The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call.
Amazon shares have lost about 1.8% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 6.9%.
What's Next for Amazon?While Amazon has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock?
There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately.
Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions.
Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Amazon was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $2.00 on $204.16 billion in revenues for the coming quarter and $8.93 on $826.27 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year.
Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Internet - Commerce is currently in the bottom 27% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.
One other stock from the same industry, MercadoLibre (MELI - Free Report) , is yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026.
This operator of an online marketplace and payments system in Latin America is expected to post quarterly earnings of $8.69 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -15.7%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days.
MercadoLibre's revenues are expected to be $9.77 billion, up 43.9% from the year-ago quarter.
Amazon disclosed Thursday that it has received $600 million in tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruled that many of President Donald Trump's levies were illegal, and it expects to return some of that cash to customers.
"We are participating in the tariff refund process and, as I mentioned earlier, we received approximately $600 million in Q2," Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's finance chief, said on the company's earnings call.
In February, the Supreme Court invalidated Trump's tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, forcing the government to pay back duties to companies that imported goods into the U.S. that were hit by tariffs.
Major companies, including Apple, Walmart, Costco, Home Depot and General Motors, all said they would apply for refunds. Trump told CNBC in April he'd "remember" companies that don't seek refunds, when asked whether companies, including Amazon, might be avoiding doing so because they're worried about offending him.
Apple said Thursday its earnings per share were lifted 5%, or 11 cents, by tariff refunds in the third quarter.
Amazon previously hadn't said whether it intended to apply for the refunds. In May, consumers filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Seattle, arguing that they were owed refunds for paying tariff-inflated prices, and alleging the company wasn't seeking refunds to "curry favor" with Trump.
Read more CNBC tech newsAmazon posts 'booming' cloud growth, hikes 2026 capex to $220 billionApple earnings: Revenue tops estimates, but supply constraints weigh on guidanceChina's open-weight model lead exposes America's AI blind spotNew details in the OpenAI Hugging Face hack show how far agents will go: 'It's now remarkably easy'Amazon, last April, landed in hot water with the White House after it was reported that the company planned to display the cost of Trump's tariffs next to some products on its site. Trump personally called Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos to complain about the plan, NBC News reported.
On Thursday, Olsavsky said Amazon was issued a "limited" refund amount because it worked to order and preposition inventory in anticipation of the tariffs.
"Second, we are not the importer of record for the large majority of items sold in our store," he said.
Many of Amazon's third-party sellers who import their goods from overseas were forced to raise prices due to the levies, and have since applied to receive tariff refunds. Outside sellers account for more than 60% of goods sold on Amazon's marketplace.
Olsavsky said some of the company's tariff refunds will be returned to shoppers.
"We've identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we've passed specific import charges onto customers, and when we receive those refunds, we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them," Olsavsky said. "Otherwise, like other large retailers, we'll utilize refunds to continue to invest in low prices for customers."
Amazon ve výsledcích hospodaření ukázal 37% růst tržeb AWS a CEO Andy Jassy řekl, že k úspěchu v AI není potřeba mít nejlepší model. Firma sází na Bedrock a přístup k více předním modelům.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images Amazon's earnings on Thursday highlighted a surprising idea gaining traction across Silicon Valley: You don't need the best models to win in AI.
The company reported blockbuster results, including a 37% jump in revenue from Amazon Web Services. Those gains came from the cloud giant running many different AI models from leading providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
In contrast, Amazon's efforts to build its own models are in somewhat of a mess, as Business Insider reported earlier this week.
On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy suggested this isn't a problem. During a call with analysts he said there won't be a single AI model that dominates the industry.
Instead, Jassy explained, customers increasingly want to use multiple leading models, a trend that's helped fuel the rapid growth of Amazon Bedrock, the company's platform for accessing foundation models.
"AWS and Amazon can have a wildly successful business without its own frontier model," Jassy said. "There is not going to be one model to rule the world."
This is a big change from what's been guiding much of the AI market since it exploded in 2022 on the back of ChatGPT. Companies have raced to develop the most powerful models, spending huge sums of money on training and other expensive development techniques.
Now, though, the race has evolved to be less about raw performance and more about building and running efficient models, so-called intelligence per dollar. This potentially suits Amazon more than some other AI rivals.
Amazon has never prioritized its own models. It did develop in-house offerings via the Nova range of models, but they struggled to come close to frontier.
More recently, the company has been overhauling its AI strategy, winding down most of the existing Nova line while shifting resources toward a new frontier-model initiative, Business Insider reported earlier this week.
Jassy's remarks suggest the company's long-term strategy is not to rely exclusively on its own models, but to make AWS the platform where customers can access the industry's leading AI systems — whether to not those come from Amazon.
Rather than trying to win solely on model performance, Amazon has focused on making Bedrock the centerpiece of it AI strategy. Last year, Jassy said AWS was "building Bedrock to be the biggest inference engine in the world" and predicted the service could eventually rival EC2, AWS's flagship cloud computing business.
During Thursday's call, Jassy said companies building AI applications want access to a wide range of models because different systems will surpass one another over time and excel at different tasks. That dynamic, he said, gives Bedrock a competitive advantage.
"If you're a company that's building important AI applications, you want to make sure that you have the ability to use all the available models," Jassy said. "They're going to each leapfrog each other at different times."
At the same time, Jassy made clear Amazon remains committed to developing its own AI models.
He said having a leading model would give the company greater control over costs for both its own consumer applications and AWS customers, while allowing Amazon to prioritize features important to customers and move faster without relying on outside providers.
Alexa, for example, has been reducing its reliance on Anthropic's costly models in favor of Amazon's own AI models to lower costs, Business Insider previously reported.
Jassy predicted that within the next few years there will be "at least a half dozen models that are comparably good to each other."
"They'll all be on Bedrock," he said, "and one of them will be ours."
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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Eugene Kim You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Eugene is Business Insider’s Chief Tech Correspondent, where he leads coverage of Amazon. His reporting spans the company’s retail operations, AWS, Alexa, and its secretive internal work culture.Previously, he worked at CNBC, Fortune Magazine Korea, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun. He holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.In 2022, Eugene broke a story uncovering Amazon’s practice of deceptively enrolling customers in Prime and deliberately making cancellation difficult. A year later, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company, citing his reporting. That case culminated in a record $2.5 billion settlement in 2025.His reporting has earned multiple honors, including the SF Press Club’s Bay Area Journalism Award and SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award.Eugene lives in the Bay Area. Contact him via email at [email protected], or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. ExpertiseAmazon, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, e-commerce, and cloud computing.Popular ArticlesAmazon:Internal Amazon emails give an exclusive look at how CEO Andy Jassy has started to run the company, with obsessive attention to the retail business and what some employees feel is micromanagingAndy Jassy will be the next CEO of Amazon. Insiders dish on what it's like to work for Jeff Bezos' successor, who built AWS into a $40 billion business.Internal documents show Amazon has for years knowingly tricked people into signing up for Prime subscriptions. 'We have been deliberately confusing,' former employee says.Inside Amazon's flailing brick-and-mortar ambitions: missed projections, pressure to cut costs, and a war with Whole FoodsInside Amazon's complex employee-review system, where workers feel left in the dark and managers expect to give 5% of reports bad reviewsAfter 28 years, 'Day 2' finally arrives at AmazonAWS, Alexa, healthcare:Inside Amazon's struggle to break into the lucrative market for SaaS business applications, including an internal pitch to buy $38 billion HubSpotInside Amazon's struggle to crack Nvidia's AI-chip dominanceAmazon's AI data center dream runs into the reality of 'zombie' facilities, higher costs, and labor shortagesAmazon is gutting its voice assistant, Alexa. Employees describe a division in crisis and huge losses on 'a wasted opportunity.'Amazon is working on a new 'Remarkable Alexa,' but internal politics and technical issues plague the projectAmazon projected huge losses from its healthcare business in 2024, but strong sales growth, internal document reveals
Amazon těží z AI spíš jako poskytovatel infrastruktury než jako tvůrce modelu. AWS chce udržet AI workloady ve svém cloudu, i když vítězem závodu bude někdo jiný. Amazon plánuje v roce 2026 investovat 200 miliard dolarů.
When investors talk about the artificial intelligence race, the conversation usually revolves around one question: Who will build the best AI model?
Will it be OpenAI? Alphabet? Anthropic? Meta?
That's certainly an important question. But it may not be the most profitable one for investors. A better question is this: Who stands to make the most money as AI becomes ubiquitous, regardless of which model ultimately wins?
To answer the question, here's one company that deserves our attention: Amazon (AMZN +3.91%).
Image source: Getty Images.
Amazon is selling the picks and shovels History offers useful lessons for investors. During a gold rush, some prospectors strike it rich, but most leave empty-handed. Still, businesses that consistently make money during the rush are often the ones selling the picks, shovels, and supplies.
Today's AI boom looks remarkably similar. Companies are racing to build increasingly capable AI models, but each one requires enormous computing power, storage, networking, and software infrastructure. Whether a business chooses OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, or another provider, someone still has to run those workloads.
That's where Amazon Web Services (AWS) comes in. AWS is already one of the world's largest cloud infrastructure providers. As enterprises deploy more AI applications, demand for computing resources should continue rising. Every new AI-powered product, AI agent, recommendation engine, or enterprise assistant represents another workload that needs infrastructure.
Amazon doesn't have to predict which model will dominate. It simply needs businesses to keep adopting AI.
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AI strengthens Amazon's entire ecosystem The good news for Amazon is that the story doesn't end with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Unlike many AI-focused companies, Amazon owns an ecosystem where AI can improve multiple businesses simultaneously.
In e-commerce, AI can generate more relevant product recommendations, improve inventory planning, forecast demand, and optimize delivery routes. For advertisers, AI can deliver better targeting and more efficient campaigns, helping brands connect with customers who are ready to buy.
Within AWS, Amazon is developing custom AI chips, such as Trainium and Inferentia, to reduce the cost of training and running AI models. Lower costs, in turn, could make AI adoption more attractive to enterprise customers and strengthen AWS's competitive position.
Each small improvement reinforces another part of Amazon's business. Better recommendations increase sales. Higher sales attract more merchants. More merchants attract more advertisers. More business activity generates additional demand for cloud services and data processing.
In other words, AI doesn't need to create a new business for Amazon. It's making an already powerful ecosystem even stronger.
Amazon probably doesn't even need to win the AI race This may be Amazon's biggest strategic advantage, yet it's underappreciated.
Microsoft wants enterprises to embrace Copilot. Alphabet wants developers and consumers to use Google Gemini. OpenAI wants ChatGPT to become the default AI assistant.
Those companies have a greater incentive to persuade customers that their AI model is the best. Amazon has a different objective.
It wants businesses to build, deploy, and scale AI applications on AWS. Whether those applications use Amazon's own models, Anthropic's Claude, or another foundation model is often less important than keeping those workloads inside Amazon's cloud ecosystem.
In other words, Amazon is positioning itself as the platform that enables AI rather than the destination where users consume it. If AI adoption accelerates across industries, Amazon could benefit even if another company builds the world's leading AI model.
But there are still risks While we have generally explored the upsides so far, that doesn't mean Amazon is guaranteed to win.
Building AI infrastructure requires enormous capital investment -- Amazon plans to invest $200 billion in 2026 -- and those costs could pressure margins in the near term. Moreover, competition from Microsoft, Alphabet, and other cloud providers remains intense, so Amazon will still need to fight for its rightful market share.
In short, execution will still matter.
What does it mean for investors? The biggest winners of a technological revolution aren't always the companies with the flashiest products. Sometimes they're the businesses that make the entire ecosystem possible, and that's the opportunity Amazon is pursuing.
While much of the market debates which chatbot or AI model will come out on top, Amazon is quietly building the infrastructure and business ecosystem that can benefit from almost every AI breakthrough.
And if AI truly becomes as transformative as many expect, Amazon's best days may still lie ahead
Amazon ve 2. čtvrtletí zvýšil tržby o 20 % na 200,6 mld. USD a provozní zisk vzrostl o 43 % na 27,5 mld. USD. Tržby AWS stouply o 37 % na 42,2 mld. USD.
Net sales increased 20% year-over-year
Operating income was $27.5 billion, up 43% year-over-year
AWS net sales increased 37%—its fastest growth in 18 quarters—to a $169 billion annualized revenue run rate
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2026.
Net sales increased 20% to $200.6 billion in the second quarter, compared with $167.7 billion in second quarter 2025. Excluding the $0.1 billion favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 20% compared with second quarter 2025. North America segment sales increased 16% year-over-year to $116.2 billion. International segment sales increased 15% year-over-year to $42.2 billion. AWS segment sales increased 37% year-over-year to $42.2 billion. Operating income increased to $27.5 billion in the second quarter, compared with $19.2 billion in second quarter 2025. North America segment operating income was $9.1 billion, compared with $7.5 billion in second quarter 2025. International segment operating income was $1.7 billion, compared with $1.5 billion in second quarter 2025. AWS segment operating income was $16.6 billion, compared with $10.2 billion in second quarter 2025. Net income increased to $62.6 billion in the second quarter, or $5.75 per diluted share, compared with $18.2 billion, or $1.68 per diluted share, in second quarter 2025. Second quarter 2026 net income includes non-operating pre-tax other income of $53.4 billion, primarily from our investments in Anthropic. Operating cash flow increased 33% to $161.4 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $121.1 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2025. Free cash flow decreased to an outflow of $7.6 billion for the trailing twelve months, driven primarily by a year-over-year increase of $66.1 billion in purchases of property and equipment, net of proceeds from sales and incentives. This increase primarily reflects investments in artificial intelligence. This compares to free cash flow inflow of $18.2 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2025. “AWS is booming, growing 36.7% year-over-year in Q2—our fastest growth in 18 quarters—and our AI and Chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion,” said Andy Jassy, President and CEO, Amazon. “In Stores, we again set record delivery speeds for Prime members in the first half of the year—over 40% more items delivered same-day or overnight, with Grocery and Everyday Essentials growing meaningfully faster than the rest of the business. And, Advertising had another strong quarter with 26% year-over-year growth. There’s a lot to be excited about, and we have much more coming for customers in the second half of the year and beyond.”
Some other highlights since the company’s last earnings announcement include that Amazon:
Exceeded a $25 billion annual revenue run rate for AWS’s AI business, growing triple-digit percentages year-over-year. Exceeded a $25 billion annual revenue run rate for its chips business, growing triple-digit percentages year-over-year. Continued gaining momentum with Trainium, with the two leading AI labs in the world, Anthropic and OpenAI, making multi-year, multi-gigawatt commitments; an increasing number of AI start-ups adopting Trainium, including unicorns like NEURA Robotics and Odyssey; and commitments from other startups like TwelveLabs, Decart, Poolside, Karakuri, Inc., Metagenomi Therapeutics, Inc., NetoAI, and Splash Music, as well as larger companies like Uber and Pinterest. Released Graviton5 into general availability. Graviton delivers up to 30 to 40% better price-performance than comparable instances, and Graviton5 delivers up to 25% better compute performance than Graviton4. Graviton is used by 98% of the top 1,000 EC2 customers, revenue commitments have increased nearly 3x quarter-over-quarter, and Graviton5 is growing nearly 2x faster than Graviton4 did. Added 10+ fully managed foundation models to Amazon Bedrock, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.6, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5, Google DeepMind’s Gemma 4, and SpaceXAI’s Grok 4.3. Amazon Bedrock provides the best selection of leading models, at superior performance, and with the governance and security controls that companies need, and it’s continuing to grow quickly—hundreds of thousands of customers now use Bedrock, more customers were added in the last six months than in the first two years after launch, and customers spent more in Q2 than all prior quarters combined. Previewed AWS Continuum, which discovers, prioritizes, validates, and remediates code vulnerabilities. It starts by ingesting the backlog of vulnerabilities a team already has, and then leverages the new frontier models to run comprehensive scans. Continuum uses agents and each company’s own business context to prioritize what matters, then validates vulnerabilities in a sandbox and recommends the fix. Added new capabilities to Bedrock AgentCore, which provides the building blocks that companies need to quickly and securely deploy and operate agents at scale. New capabilities include Payments (so agents can execute transactions autonomously), Web Search (to ground agents’ knowledge without having to leave AWS), and Harness, which further speeds up how fast customers can stitch together all the infrastructure they need for their agents. Made Amazon Quick—an intelligent AI work companion that helps manage, search, and automate digital workloads across email, calendar, local or cloud files, and custom workflows—even more capable, adding autonomous agents that customers set up in plain language to run continuously in the background and carry out multi-step tasks; a personalized activity feed that pulls email, messages, calendar, and tasks into one prioritized view; and 16 new integrations, including Adobe, Moody’s, and Snowflake. Quick manages across leading SaaS tools like Slack, Salesforce, Jira, Teams, and ServiceNow; enforces a company’s existing access controls; and takes actions like scheduling meetings, drafting and sending email, updating a CRM record, building a dashboard, and more. Made its spec-drive coding agent, Kiro, available on iOS so developers can now kick off a new project, monitor progress, steer an agent, and interact with Kiro sessions from their phone, desktop, command line, and the web. Kiro is up to 50% more cost-effective than alternatives and tripled in usage quarter-over-quarter. Added new capabilities to AWS DevOps Agent, an always-available software operations teammate that helps developers ship software safely and reliably, including Release Management to perform readiness reviews of code changes and autonomously test releases to spot potential issues before they go live. Launched serverless infrastructure for agentic AI that scales on demand, including: Lambda MicroVMs, a new flavor of the popular AWS Lambda serverless compute service that not only offers instant start times with the ability to scale all the way up or down depending on demand, but also now provides a stateful runtime with sessions that can last up to 8 hours—ideal for long-running agent loops, multi-step pipelines, or persistent database engines. Next-generation OpenSearch Serverless, which gives agents fast access to search across massive volumes of data, scales capacity up to 20x faster than the previous generation, and offers up to 60% cost savings versus provisioning for peak. Purpose-built log analytics engine for Amazon OpenSearch Service, designed to keep pace with the vast increase in logs being produced by agentic workloads. It delivers up to 4x better price performance compared to the existing general-purpose engine, up to 2x higher data ingestion on the same hardware, and up to 2x faster analytical queries, while retaining up to 3x more data at the same cost—enabling teams to retain and analyze more observability data without choosing between insight and budget. Announced an investment of $1 billion to create AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, a team of AI engineers embedded directly with customers to co-develop and deploy agentic AI solutions in days rather than months. Early customers include Allen Institute, Cox Automotive, the NBA, the NFL, Ricoh, and Southwest Airlines. Announced general availability of AWS Secret Cloud for Industry, giving defense contractors a faster, more secure path to classified innovation, with Northrop Grumman first to run classified workloads on the platform, and committed up to $1 billion in cloud credits to accelerate U.S. Intelligence Community cloud migration and modernization. Announced its global data centers are over 7x more water-efficient than the industry average. Amazon also reached 75% progress toward its goal to be water positive across global data center operations by 2030, and achieved water-positive status across its direct operations in India ahead of its 2027 target. Announced new AWS agreements with Warner Bros. Discovery, Vodafone, Siemens Energy, Ryanair, Pinterest, Snowflake, Moody’s, Danske Bank, WNBA, Pennymac, Fiserv, WPP Enterprise Solutions, Vonage, Recursive, fal, Chai Discovery, Odyssey, TwelveLabs, Reactor, OpenRouter, Dash0, New York State Office of Information Technology Services, State of Iowa, University of South Florida, and The University of Utah. Continued to expand its ultra-fast delivery service, Amazon Now, which offers delivery in 30 minutes or less on thousands of everyday essentials—adding 80 new cities and towns across the U.S. and several major cities in Egypt. Amazon Now is available in nine countries and over 250 cities and towns globally, and customers love it, with over 80% growth in gross sales and units sold quarter-over-quarter and over 60% more customers served quarter-over-quarter. Added millions of new products to its selection, including over 700,000 from notable brands like ADT Blu, Bobbi Brown, BROWN GIRL Jane, CR7 Underwear, LeGer, Mamonde, OLIVA COSMETICS, Rabanne, and Ted Baker. Brought together Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping, an agentic AI shopping assistant that offers personalized recommendations, product comparisons, price history, and the ability to automate shopping through features like Price Alerts and Auto-Buy. Worldwide customer adoption and engagement accelerated in Q2, with active users close to doubling and interactions up over 5x year-over-year. Launched Amazon Supply Chain Services so any business can move, store, and deliver everything from raw materials to finished products using the same supply chain that supports Amazon, with Procter & Gamble, 3M, Lands’ End, and American Eagle Outfitters among the first customers. Reached $60 billion in annualized gross sales for Amazon Business and continued to expand selection—adding nearly 30% more items compared to last year, including Same-Day Delivery of fresh groceries for businesses in 2,300+ U.S. cities and towns. Introduced the next-generation of Proteus, an autonomous robot that assists Amazon fulfillment center employees by moving goods up to 1,300 pounds, reducing heavy lifting and further increasing safety. Using AI, employees can now direct Proteus with plain, conversational language. Grew the number of new customers for Amazon Pharmacy by more than 2x in the first six months of the year, and same-day prescription deliveries nearly 5x. Also saved customers nearly $250 million so far this year in out-of-pocket costs, up more than 400% year-over-year, through manufacturer discounts applied automatically on an expanded selection of widely prescribed medications. Expanded Ads Agent—an AI-powered tool that simplifies planning, launching, and managing advertising campaigns and turns hours of setup and targeting into minutes—to 11 new countries so far this year. Advertisers using Ads Agent see 8% lower cost-per-impression and 6% lower cost-per-acquisition than those that don’t use it. Expanded Alexa+ to Germany, Austria, France, and Brazil, with hundreds of millions of customers now using new Alexa experiences, and that number growing every month. Alexa continues to drive meaningful momentum for the business, including in the U.S., where customers who use Alexa for Shopping spend an average of over 40% more per order than those who don’t, and customers who have tried Alexa+ are signing up for Prime at a nearly 25% higher rate. Drew 36 million viewers globally for the series premiere of Off Campus on Prime Video in its first 12 days, becoming Prime Video’s No. 3 top-viewed series debut ever. Delivered strong viewership for inaugural season of NBA on Prime Video, with a peak of 6.5 million U.S. viewers for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals (outperforming Game 7 on broadcast in 2025). In Europe, viewership of the NBA more than doubled year-over-year on Prime Video, with the highest average viewership on record. Averaged 2.3 million viewers during the second season of NASCAR on Prime Video and attracted the youngest audience the last two years among NASCAR broadcasters since 2017. Completed four additional launches for Amazon Leo, its low Earth orbit satellite network, bringing the total constellation to nearly 400 satellites in orbit—enough to begin initial satellite internet service this year. Received approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Part 555 Exemption) for Zoox to charge for rides—the first purpose-built robotaxi to receive this exemption—paving the way for Zoox to begin offering paid commercial service to customers. Supported relief efforts following earthquakes in Venezuela with its Amazon Disaster Relief program, donating and delivering more than 650,000 emergency supplies to more than a dozen nonprofits and establishing weekly humanitarian relief flights to Caracas in a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Airlink, the U.S. State Department, and World Food Programme, delivering approximately 120 tons of supplies. Financial Guidance
The following forward-looking statements reflect Amazon.com’s expectations as of July 30, 2026, and are subject to substantial uncertainty. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, such as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates and energy prices, changes in global economic and geopolitical conditions, tariff and trade policies, resource and supply volatility, including for memory chips, and customer demand and spending (including the impact of recessionary fears), inflation, interest rates, regional labor market constraints, world events, the rate of growth of the internet, online commerce, cloud services, and new and emerging technologies, and the various factors detailed below.
Third Quarter 2026 Guidance
Net sales are expected to be between $197.0 billion and $202.0 billion, or to grow between 9% and 12% compared with third quarter 2025. Excluding the impact of Prime Day in both 2025 and 2026, third quarter 2026 year-over-year growth would be nearly 400 basis points higher. This guidance anticipates an unfavorable impact of approximately 80 basis points from foreign exchange rates. Operating income is expected to be between $22.5 billion and $26.5 billion, compared with $17.4 billion in third quarter 2025. This guidance assumes, among other things, no impact from energy derivative contract remeasurements, and that no additional business acquisitions, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded. Conference Call Information
A conference call will be webcast live today at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m. ET, and will be available for at least three months at amazon.com/ir. This call will contain forward-looking statements and other material information regarding the Company’s financial and operating results.
Forward-Looking Statements
These forward-looking statements are inherently difficult to predict. Actual results and outcomes could differ materially for a variety of reasons, including, in addition to the factors discussed above, the amount that Amazon.com invests in new business opportunities and the timing of those investments, the mix of products and services sold to customers, the mix of net sales derived from products as compared with services, the extent to which we owe income or other taxes, competition, management of growth, potential fluctuations in operating results, international growth and expansion, the outcomes of claims, litigation, government investigations, and other proceedings, fulfillment, sortation, delivery, and data center optimization, risks of inventory management, variability in demand, the degree to which the Company enters into, maintains, and develops commercial agreements, proposed and completed acquisitions and strategic transactions, payments risks, and risks of fulfillment throughput and productivity. Other risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to new products, services, and technologies, security incidents, system interruptions, government regulation and taxation, and fraud. In addition, global economic and geopolitical conditions and additional or unforeseen circumstances, developments, or events may give rise to or amplify many of these risks. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.
Additional Information
Our investor relations website is amazon.com/ir and we encourage investors to use it as a way of easily finding information about us. We promptly make available on this website, free of charge, the reports that we file or furnish with the SEC, corporate governance information (including our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics), and select press releases, which may contain material information about us, and you may subscribe to be notified of new information posted to this site.
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.COM, INC.
Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows
(in millions)
(unaudited)
Three Months Ended
June 30,
Six Months Ended
June 30,
Twelve Months Ended
June 30,
2025
2026
2025
2026
2025
2026
CASH, CASH EQUIVALENTS, AND RESTRICTED CASH, BEGINNING OF PERIOD
$
69,893
$
104,692
$
82,312
$
90,106
$
71,673
$
61,453
OPERATING ACTIVITIES:
Net income
18,164
62,647
35,291
92,902
70,623
135,281
Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash from operating activities:
Depreciation and amortization of property and equipment and capitalized content costs, operating lease assets, and other
15,227
19,988
29,489
38,933
58,562
75,200
Stock-based compensation
6,534
6,038
10,223
10,070
20,551
19,314
Non-operating expense (income), net
(1,258
)
(53,381
)
(4,075
)
(69,013
)
(4,702
)
(79,818
)
Deferred income taxes
11
17,691
518
30,489
(2,407
)
41,441
Changes in operating assets and liabilities:
Inventories
(4,054
)
(1,818
)
(5,276
)
(196
)
(5,851
)
2,078
Accounts receivable, net and other
(1,125
)
(8,204
)
122
(13,954
)
(4,602
)
(21,409
)
Other assets
(2,971
)
(4,717
)
(6,373
)
(8,528
)
(15,100
)
(17,787
)
Accounts payable
7,058
9,442
(1,985
)
705
6,264
13,921
Accrued expenses and other
(4,952
)
(2,018
)
(9,013
)
(10,063
)
(4,842
)
(6,069
)
Unearned revenue
(119
)
(281
)
609
74
2,641
(749
)
Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities
32,515
45,387
49,530
71,419
121,137
161,403
INVESTING ACTIVITIES:
Purchases of property and equipment
(32,183
)
(54,208
)
(57,202
)
(98,411
)
(107,656
)
(173,028
)
Proceeds from property and equipment sales and incentives
815
1,132
1,579
2,101
4,703
4,021
Acquisitions, net of cash acquired, non-marketable investments, and other, net
(1,700
)
(24,359
)
(1,652
)
(39,767
)
(4,809
)
(41,956
)
Sales and maturities of marketable securities
11,441
24,196
19,178
41,882
30,924
67,090
Purchases of marketable securities
(17,797
)
(26,006
)
(31,130
)
(49,262
)
(46,731
)
(72,902
)
Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities
(39,424
)
(79,245
)
(69,227
)
(143,457
)
(123,569
)
(216,775
)
FINANCING ACTIVITIES:
Proceeds from short-term debt, and other
2,093
9,368
3,908
15,386
8,187
20,798
Repayments of short-term debt, and other
(1,392
)
(9,573
)
(3,474
)
(15,682
)
(7,901
)
(20,634
)
Proceeds from long-term debt
—
13,557
746
66,998
746
81,925
Repayments of long-term debt
(2,751
)
(2,752
)
(2,751
)
(2,752
)
(7,434
)
(5,022
)
Principal repayments of finance leases
(411
)
(395
)
(821
)
(863
)
(1,556
)
(1,599
)
Principal repayments of financing obligations
(78
)
(59
)
(194
)
(174
)
(694
)
(308
)
Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities
(2,539
)
10,146
(2,586
)
62,913
(8,652
)
75,160
Foreign currency effect on cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash
1,008
(53
)
1,424
(54
)
864
(314
)
Net increase (decrease) in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash
(8,440
)
(23,765
)
(20,859
)
(9,179
)
(10,220
)
19,474
CASH, CASH EQUIVALENTS, AND RESTRICTED CASH, END OF PERIOD
$
61,453
$
80,927
$
61,453
$
80,927
$
61,453
$
80,927
SUPPLEMENTAL CASH FLOW INFORMATION:
Cash paid for interest on debt, net of capitalized interest
$
523
$
736
$
759
$
1,010
$
1,668
$
1,709
Cash paid for operating leases
3,758
3,489
7,320
7,804
13,485
15,522
Cash paid for interest on finance leases
72
85
143
187
284
339
Cash paid for interest on financing obligations
52
50
107
126
212
215
Cash paid for income taxes, net of refunds
4,761
2,655
5,638
3,978
11,788
6,635
Assets acquired under operating leases
4,621
7,670
8,942
13,909
16,702
24,897
Property and equipment acquired under finance leases, net of remeasurements and modifications
937
563
991
2,128
1,622
4,048
Increase (decrease) in property and equipment acquired but not yet paid
(1,600
)
10,700
1,508
20,620
5,376
29,267
AMAZON.COM, INC.
Consolidated Statements of Operations
(in millions, except per share data)
(unaudited)
Three Months Ended
June 30,
Six Months Ended
June 30,
2025
2026
2025
2026
Net product sales
$
68,246
$
77,602
$
132,216
$
148,906
Net service sales
99,456
123,004
191,153
233,219
Total net sales
167,702
200,606
323,369
382,125
Operating expenses:
Cost of sales
80,809
95,778
157,785
183,241
Fulfillment
25,976
29,633
50,569
56,922
Technology and infrastructure
27,166
33,158
50,160
62,725
Sales and marketing
11,416
11,698
21,179
22,012
General and administrative
2,965
2,788
5,593
5,375
Other operating expense (income), net
199
90
507
537
Total operating expenses
148,531
173,145
285,793
330,812
Operating income
19,171
27,461
37,576
51,313
Interest income
1,085
1,295
2,151
2,430
Interest expense
(516
)
(1,314
)
(1,057
)
(2,114
)
Other income (expense), net
1,117
53,415
3,866
69,062
Total non-operating income
1,686
53,396
4,960
69,378
Income before income taxes
20,857
80,857
42,536
120,691
Provision for income taxes
(2,678
)
(18,199
)
(7,231
)
(27,759
)
Equity-method investment activity, net of tax
(15
)
(11
)
(14
)
(30
)
Net income
$
18,164
$
62,647
$
35,291
$
92,902
Basic earnings per share
$
1.71
$
5.82
$
3.32
$
8.64
Diluted earnings per share
$
1.68
$
5.75
$
3.27
$
8.53
Weighted-average shares used in computation of earnings per share:
Basic
10,637
10,769
10,620
10,756
Diluted
10,806
10,903
10,800
10,889
AMAZON.COM, INC.
Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income
(in millions)
(unaudited)
Three Months Ended
June 30,
Six Months Ended
June 30,
2025
2026
2025
2026
Net income
$
18,164
$
62,647
$
35,291
$
92,902
Other comprehensive income (loss):
Foreign currency translation adjustments, net of tax of $(142), $(66), $(208), and $(79)
3,314
(799
)
4,849
(1,563
)
Unrealized gains (losses) on net investment hedging instruments, net of tax of $0, $(69), $0, and $(45)
—
229
—
144
Available-for-sale debt securities:
Change in net unrealized gains (losses), net of tax of $(12), $(13,695), $(23), and $(14,035)
40
41,988
77
42,814
Less: reclassification adjustment for net losses (gains) included in “Other income (expense), net,” net of tax of $5, $0, $814, and $1,142
(17
)
—
(2,471
)
(3,337
)
Net change
23
41,988
(2,394
)
39,477
Other, net of tax of $(1), $1, $0, and $(1)
(3
)
1
(1
)
(1
)
Total other comprehensive income (loss)
3,334
41,419
2,454
38,057
Comprehensive income
$
21,498
$
104,066
$
37,745
$
130,959
AMAZON.COM, INC.
Segment Information
(in millions)
(unaudited)
Three Months Ended
June 30,
Six Months Ended
June 30,
2025
2026
2025
2026
North America
Net sales
$
100,068
$
116,177
$
192,955
$
220,320
Operating expenses
92,551
107,054
179,597
202,930
Operating income
$
7,517
$
9,123
$
13,358
$
17,390
International
Net sales
$
36,761
$
42,197
$
70,274
$
81,986
Operating expenses
35,267
40,480
67,763
78,845
Operating income
$
1,494
$
1,717
$
2,511
$
3,141
AWS
Net sales
$
30,873
$
42,232
$
60,140
$
79,819
Operating expenses
20,713
25,611
38,433
49,037
Operating income
$
10,160
$
16,621
$
21,707
$
30,782
Consolidated
Net sales
$
167,702
$
200,606
$
323,369
$
382,125
Operating expenses
148,531
173,145
285,793
330,812
Operating income
19,171
27,461
37,576
51,313
Total non-operating income
1,686
53,396
4,960
69,378
Provision for income taxes
(2,678
)
(18,199
)
(7,231
)
(27,759
)
Equity-method investment activity, net of tax
(15
)
(11
)
(14
)
(30
)
Net income
$
18,164
$
62,647
$
35,291
$
92,902
Segment Highlights:
Y/Y net sales growth:
North America
11
%
16
%
9
%
14
%
International
16
15
10
17
AWS
17
37
17
33
Consolidated
13
20
11
18
Net sales mix:
North America
60
%
58
%
60
%
58
%
International
22
21
22
21
AWS
18
21
18
21
Consolidated
100
%
100
%
100
%
100
%
AMAZON.COM, INC.
Consolidated Balance Sheets
(in millions, except per share data)
December 31, 2025
June 30, 2026
(unaudited)
ASSETS
Current assets:
Cash and cash equivalents
$
86,810
$
78,213
Marketable securities
36,219
44,775
Inventories
38,325
38,184
Accounts receivable, net and other
67,729
88,092
Total current assets
229,083
249,264
Property and equipment, net
357,025
446,046
Operating leases
86,054
92,743
Goodwill
23,273
23,504
Other assets
122,607
284,132
Total assets
$
818,042
$
1,095,689
LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY
Current liabilities:
Accounts payable
$
121,909
$
147,440
Accrued expenses and other
75,520
73,406
Unearned revenue
20,576
20,428
Total current liabilities
218,005
241,274
Long-term lease liabilities
87,339
94,338
Long-term debt
65,648
128,894
Other long-term liabilities
35,985
79,563
Commitments and contingencies
Stockholders’ equity:
Preferred stock ($0.01 par value; 500 shares authorized; no shares issued or outstanding)
—
—
Common stock ($0.01 par value; 100,000 shares authorized; 11,246 and 11,298 shares issued; 10,731 and 10,783 shares outstanding)
112
113
Treasury stock, at cost
(7,837
)
(7,837
)
Additional paid-in capital
140,024
149,619
Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)
28,230
66,287
Retained earnings
250,536
343,438
Total stockholders’ equity
411,065
551,620
Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity
$
818,042
$
1,095,689
AMAZON.COM, INC.
Supplemental Financial Information and Business Metrics
Includes product sales and digital media content where we record revenue gross. We leverage our retail infrastructure to offer a wide selection of consumable and durable goods that includes media products available in both a physical and digital format, such as books, videos, games, music, and software. These product sales include digital products sold on a transactional basis. Digital media content subscriptions that provide unlimited viewing or usage rights are included in “Subscription services.”
(2)
Includes product sales where our customers physically select items in a store. Sales to customers who order goods online for delivery or pickup at our physical stores are included in “Online stores.”
(3)
Includes commissions and any related fulfillment and shipping fees, and other third-party seller services.
(4)
Includes sales of advertising services to sellers, vendors, publishers, authors, and others, through programs such as sponsored ads, display, and video advertising.
(5)
Includes annual and monthly fees associated with Amazon Prime memberships, as well as digital video, audiobook, digital music, e-book, and other non-AWS subscription services.
(6)
Includes sales related to various other offerings (such as shipping services, healthcare services, and certain licensing and distribution of video content) and our co-branded credit card agreements.
(7)
Excludes the impact of Whole Foods Market.
Amazon.com, Inc.
Certain Definitions
Customer Accounts
References to customers mean customer accounts established when a customer places an order through one of our stores. Customer accounts exclude certain customers, including customers associated with certain of our acquisitions, Amazon Payments customers, AWS customers, and the customers of select companies with whom we have a technology alliance or marketing and promotional relationship. Customers are considered active when they have placed an order during the preceding twelve-month period. Seller Accounts
References to sellers means seller accounts, which are established when a seller receives an order from a customer account. Sellers are considered active when they have received an order from a customer during the preceding twelve-month period. AWS Customers
References to AWS customers mean unique AWS customer accounts, which are unique customer account IDs that are eligible to use AWS services. This includes AWS accounts in the AWS free tier. Multiple users accessing AWS services via one account ID are counted as a single account. Customers are considered active when they have had AWS usage activity during the preceding one-month period. Units
References to units mean physical and digital units sold (net of returns and cancellations) by us and sellers in our stores as well as Amazon-owned items sold in other stores. Units sold are paid units and do not include units associated with AWS, certain acquisitions, certain subscriptions, rental businesses, or advertising businesses, or Amazon gift cards. More News From Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon omezuje vývoj několika svých AI modelů Nova, včetně Premier, Omni, Reel a Canvas, a přesouvá zdroje do cloudu, reklamy, logistiky a retailu. V soutěži o AI se tak soustředí spíš na praktické využití než na největší model.
Amazon’s decision this week to scale back parts of its homegrown artificial intelligence portfolio has been taken by the marketplace as a retreat from the frontier-model competition.
That’s only partly true. Amazon appears to be abandoning the most expensive and least defensible layer of the AI stack in order to strengthen the businesses where it already enjoys structural advantages: cloud computing, retail operations, advertising and logistics.
In other words, Amazon may be giving up on winning the AI popularity contest in favor of winning the AI economy. The tech and retail giant is scaling back development of several products within its Nova family, including its Premier and Omni models as well as Reel and Canvas. Some have reportedly shifted into maintenance mode, while engineering resources are being redirected toward a smaller number of advanced initiatives.
On the surface, the moves resemble a retreat. Viewed through a business lens, however, they look more like capital discipline. It also raises the stakes in Amazon’s competition with Walmart, which is applying AI to shopping, supply chains and employee productivity without attempting to compete directly in the frontier-model race.
See more: Amazon and Walmart Face a New Gatekeeper for Loyalty
Retailers Get Specific About the AI They Need for Their Operations Amazon does not need to build the world’s most celebrated AI model to become one of the biggest economic winners from AI. It needs companies to rent its computing infrastructure, deploy models through AWS and use artificial intelligence to buy more ads, move more inventory and lower the cost of fulfilling orders.
Amazon is restructuring its artificial intelligence operation, scaling back several homegrown models and concentrating resources on a smaller number of advanced projects. The shift comes as Amazon prepares to spend heavily on AI infrastructure while trying to turn the technology into practical advantages across its cloud, advertising, logistics and retail businesses.
Whether an enterprise chooses Anthropic, Meta, Amazon or another provider, AWS benefits when customers consume more compute. Amazon Bedrock becomes more valuable as organizations seek a single environment to deploy, govern and switch among multiple models.
Amazon’s strategic rival is not only OpenAI or Google. It is Walmart.
See also: Amazon and Walmart’s Summer Sale Wars Deliver a Win (With An Asterisk)
Walmart is applying AI to product search, supply chains, employee productivity and store operations without making a major bid to become a frontier-model leader. That contrast matters because it points toward the next phase of retail AI competition.
Amazon and Walmart are unlikely to win based on which company trains the most impressive general-purpose model. They will win based on which company can connect increasingly available intelligence to proprietary commercial systems.
For Amazon, those systems include fulfillment centers, marketplace sellers, advertising inventory, Prime relationships and AWS. For Walmart, they include stores, local inventory, supplier relationships, employee workflows and purchase data.
The competitive advantage is shifting from model ownership to operational context.
Consumers now use mobile devices for 53% of purchases, but according to new data from PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa Acceptance Solutions, the bigger shift is happening before checkout. The report, “Global Digital Shopping Index: The AI-Powered Shopper Has Arrived,” revealed the ways in which the smartphone has become an in-store force. Shoppers now use their phones to discover products, compare prices, read reviews, check inventory, access loyalty offers and pay in stores.
Amazon podle Financial Times zjistil „katastrofálně drahé“ překročení rozpočtu při nasazení umělé inteligence. Jeden projekt skončil 860 % nad rozpočtem po útratě 1,8 milionu USD.
Amazon has reportedly uncovered instances of “catastrophically expensive” cost overruns caused by errors in AI deployment.
That’s according to a report Thursday (July 30) from the Financial Times (FT), citing multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Those sources said that Amazon senior engineers told colleagues at a staff meeting earlier this week that efforts to switch tasks from conventional programming to using artificial intelligence models had caused “unplanned” spending.
The FT notes that the issue underlines the trouble even the largest tech companies are having with weaving AI into day-to-day operations without spending too much.
“It’s difficult to figure out how much anything [AI related] costs,” a senior Amazon employee told the FT.
According to the FT’s sources, employees learned during a presentation this week about an incident in which Amazon spent $1.8 million on matching author details with listings on the company’s eCommerce site using Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet despite the deployment failing.
This meant the project ran 860% over budget, with the spending taking five months to detect, the sources added. Engineers reportedly told staff the overspending wasn’t a one-time thing. In another incident, Amazon incurred around $541,000 in unanticipated costs tied to creating financial auditing tools.
“As with any new technology, we’re experimenting, learning and improving how we use it, including how we drive cost efficiencies,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to PYMNTS.
“Cherry-picking small, isolated examples where teams are learning from one another and portraying them as business as usual doesn’t reflect how teams across Amazon are using AI.”
The news follows reports from earlier this month that AI spending by the world’s biggest tech companies have left investors feeling uneasy.
Meanwhile research by PYMNTS Intelligence finds companies from a range of industries investing more in AI, though for different reasons.
“Financial firms are funding AI to improve productivity, sharpen competitive positioning and reduce risk. Healthcare firms are still using budgets to test what works. Media and advertising firms are moving quickly, often with strong executive backing, but with less reliance on hard financial returns,” the report said.
“The spending pattern suggests that AI is entering a more practical phase. Like a company moving from blueprints to construction, enterprises are beginning to decide which projects deserve real capital and which still need proof.”
Amazon po uzavření trhu oznámí výsledky za 2. čtvrtletí; trh sleduje hlavně AWS a kapitálové výdaje. Odhady počítají s EPS 1,82 USD a tržbami 196,47 miliardy USD.
Amazon is set to announce its second-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.
Here's what analysts are expecting, according to estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: $1.82 Revenue: $196.47 billion Wall Street is also looking at other key revenue numbers:
Amazon Web Services: $40.54 billion expected, according to StreetAccountAdvertising: $19.43 billion expected, according to StreetAccountInvestors are watching Amazon and the rest of the so-called hyperscalers' capital expenditures as the mood around massive investments in artificial intelligence has grown increasingly jittery. Alphabet shares sank last week after the company hiked its capex forecast for the year to as high as $205 billion.
On Thursday, Microsoft shares surged as much as 15% after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and reaffirmed its 2026 capex plans. Meta's stock tumbled 9%, meanwhile, after it gave a light revenue forecast for the current quarter, with its AI bets eating into its cash flow.
Amazon's capital expenditures reached $44.2 billion in the first quarter, up 77% from a year ago, and the figure is expected to creep higher in the second quarter to $49.3 billion, per FactSet data.
The company held steady on its February guidance that capex will hit roughly $200 billion for 2026. But several analysts are expecting Amazon to follow in the footsteps of Alphabet and lift its forecast for the year.
Read more CNBC tech newsMicrosoft beats Q4 cloud expectations as full-year Azure revenue tops $100 billionMeta's Reality Labs lost over $4.6 billion in second quarterMeta posts earnings miss, issues light revenue guidanceTim Cook's last earnings call comes at momentous time for Apple with stock at recordAnalysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a research note earlier this month that the "ecosystem remains compute-constrained and urgency to spend remains high." They now expect Amazon's capex to reach $218 billion this year, and forecast budgets to keep rising through 2028, when capex could total $318 billion.
The analysts were also bullish on Amazon's cloud business, pointing to its "private lab deals" as a catalyst for "multi-year growth durability." Amazon has continued to deepen its cloud and chips partnerships with the leading AI providers OpenAI and Anthropic. In April, it struck a deal with Meta to supply the social networking giant with AWS Graviton chips.
"We also think AWS's access to almost all of the leading models, small/medium and customized models position it as a winner in a world where optimizing token cost per task is the key," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote.
Cloud growth will be in focus after Amazon's primary rivals both posted strong results. Google Cloud revenue jumped 82% year over year in the most recent quarter. Microsoft's Azure cloud revenue rose 43% during the fiscal fourth quarter.
AWS revenue is expected to rise about 31% from a year ago, according to StreetAccount, compared with 28% growth in the first quarter, which represented its fastest expansion in more than three years.
While Amazon continues to invest in AI, it has trimmed its corporate head count. The company held layoffs in its customer service and seller support divisions in recent months.
Amazon stock chart.
Last week, it announced job cuts in its artificial general intelligence unit, marking the latest reorganization of that group after Amazon installed a new AGI leader and the head of its AGI Lab announced his departure.
During the second quarter, Amazon hosted its annual Prime Day discount bonanza. The company moved up the event from its typical July time frame, citing a busy calendar marked by the World Cup and America's 250th anniversary of independence.
Mizuho analysts wrote in a Monday note that the timing shift could lead to a slowdown in Amazon's North America retail sales growth in the third quarter before they reaccelerate in the fourth quarter.
U.S. online spending across all retailers during Prime Day, which ran June 23 through June 26, grew about 9.3% year over year to $26.4 billion, according to Adobe. Amazon doesn't release sales figures from the event.
Evercore analysts described the event as "reasonably successful" in a note to clients earlier this week. Analysts at KeyBanc said their proprietary data showed Prime Week spending rose 41.7%, compared with 50.5% last year, indicating the event was "strong, but not as strong as last year."
Amazon stock is up about 3% year to date, while the S&P 500 has risen roughly 8%.
Americký e-shop a poskytovatel cloudové infrastruktury Amazon zveřejní své výsledky hospodaření za 2Q 2026 již dnes po uzavření amerických trhů. Přinášíme přehled toho nejdůležitějšího, co bude stát za pozornost.
Výnosy potáhne AWS i reklama Celkové výnosy by podle analytiků měly meziročně vzrůst o 17,5 % na 197,01 mld. USD, tedy do horní poloviny výhledu společnosti 194 až 199 mld. USD. Růst by měly táhnout divize AWS a reklamních služeb.
Odhady výnosů Amazonu ze 2Q dle divize
(mld. USD) Divize Konsensus 2Q 2025 Meziroční změna Online prodej (1P)
69,92 61,49 +14 % Služby pro prodejce třetích stran (3P)
46,15 40,35 +14 % Cloudové služby AWS
40,57 30,87 +31 % Reklamní služby
19,32 15,69 +23 % Služby související s předplatným 13,75 12,21 +13 % Kamenné obchody 5,87 5,60 +5 % Ostatní 1,66 1,50 +11 % Klíčovým tématem zůstává AWS Nejsledovanějším segmentem bude bezpochyby AWS, u kterého se očekává další zrychlení. Po 20% růstu výnosů ve 3Q 2025, 24 % ve 4Q a 28 % v 1Q 2026, trh očekává meziroční růst o 31 % na 40,57 mld. USD. Analytici z Wells Fargo očekávají dokonce zrychlení na +34 % meziročně, přičemž odhadují příspěvek Anthropicu k meziročnímu růstu AWS ve 2Q (oproti 1Q) dodatečnými ~400 bazickými body.
Pozornost si zaslouží také objem nezpracovaných zakázek. Management naposledy uvedl backlog AWS ve výši 364 mld. USD, a to bez následně uzavřené obrovské dohody s Anthropicem (>100 mld. USD). Vedle cloudu bude také stát za pozornost případný komentář k byznysu s vlastními čipy (Graviton a Trainium). Ten podle posledního komentáře ve výsledcích za 1Q dosahoval ročního tempa tržeb 20 mld. USD s trojciferným meziročním růstem.
Zisk na akcii bude pravděpodobně zkreslený přeceněním Anthropicu Trh odhaduje zisk na akcii ve výši 1,84 USD. Stejně jako ve výsledkovém reportu Alphabet za 2Q bude však zisk na akcii pravděpodobně zkreslený přeceněním podílu v Anthropicu. Již výsledky za 1Q zahrnovaly přecenění ve výši 16,8 mld. USD právě z tohoto podílu. Více vypovídající tak bude provozní zisk, který Amazon očekával v rozmezí 20 až 24 mld. USD. Trh odhaduje 23,61 mld. USD.
Kapitálové výdaje ve středu zájmu Amazon již avizoval, že letos plánuje proinvestovat zhruba 200 mld. USD napříč AI infrastrukturou, čipy, robotikou, logistickými aktivy i satelity na nízké oběžné dráze (v rámci Amazon LEO). Za samotný druhý kvartál očekávají analytici kapitálové výdaje 49,41 mld. USD. Bude tak zajímavé sledovat, zda Amazon ve stopách Alphabetu svůj letošní výhled kapitálových výdajů navýší.
Odvrácenou stranou investic je pokračující tlak na volné hotovostní toky, které ve výsledcích za 1Q za posledních dvanáct měsíců činily pouhých 1,23 mld. USD. Dá se tak očekávat, že stejně jako u Alphabetu se dostanou do záporných hodnot.
Představení společnosti Zajímá vás společnost Amazon? Přečtěte si první a druhý díl podrobného představení společnosti.
Akcie Amazon Akcie Amazon (AMZN) před výsledky posilují o 4,95 % na 237,86 USD.
Společnost Zoox, dceřiná společnost Amazonu vyvíjející autonomní vozidla, bude moci v USA během následujících dvou let komerčně nasadit až 2 500 vozů ročně. Americký Národní úřad pro bezpečnost silničního provozu (NHTSA) oznámil, že firmě udělí dočasnou výjimku umožňující rozšíření provozu, a to za podmínky posíleného a přizpůsobivého dohledového rámce, který se bude vyvíjet spolu s technologií Zoox.
Výjimka je pro Zoox zásadní, protože jeho vozidlo nemá volant ani pedály a umí jezdit obousměrně. Provozovatelé autonomních vozidel bez klasických ovládacích prvků potřebují federální schválení. Zoox si bezpečnost svého autonomního vozu certifikoval sám v roce 2022 a dříve už získal výjimku pro výzkumné a demonstrační účely. Firma aktuálně provozuje jízdy v Las Vegas a San Franciscu a testuje v několika dalších městech.
Waymo od Alphabetu, které trhu autonomních vozidel v USA dominuje, obdobné výjimky dosud nepotřebovalo, poněvadž jeho flotila stojí na běžných vozech s volantem a pedály. NHTSA zároveň pracuje na nových bezpečnostních požadavcích upravujících chování autonomních vozidel na silnici. Změny by mohly uvolnit cestu účelově konstruovaným vozům firem Zoox, Waymo a Tesla. Úřad chce odstranit byrokratické překážky v rámci širší snahy dostat autonomní vozy na silnice ve větších počtech.
Představení společnosti Zajímá vás společnost Amazon? Přečtěte si první a druhý díl podrobného představení společnosti.
Akcie Amazon Akcie Amazon (AMZN) v předburzovní fázi posilují o 3,69 % na 235,01 USD.
Amazon rozšířil roli Swamiho Sivasubramaniana, který nově vede „Agentic AI & Emerging Technologies“ a bude určovat AI strategii i technický směr v AWS. Zároveň firma omezuje práci na frontier modelech a víc se soustředí na AI aplikace a služby.
by Todd Bishop on Jul 29, 2026 at 4:38 pmJuly 29, 2026 at 4:50 pm
Swami Sivasubramanian on stage at AWS re:Invent in 2023, with a keynote slide behind him. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Amazon just broadened the role of Swami Sivasubramanian, the VP behind AWS’s agentic AI push, expanding and renaming his organization to include emerging technologies, and giving him a larger mandate to shape AI strategy and technical direction across the cloud division.
Sivasubramanian announced the change in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, saying he will now lead the “Agentic AI & Emerging Technologies” organization, with an expanded title to match.
He described emerging technologies as “the work that doesn’t fit neatly into a team because it doesn’t exist yet.” It’s a type of work he’s done before, including formative roles with DynamoDB, now one of AWS’s most widely used databases, and Bedrock, the platform through which AWS customers access AI models from Anthropic, Meta, and others.
“When the industry is changing this quickly, it’s important to step back, pressure-test ideas, and see the big picture to help teams scale their impact,” he wrote.
Sivasubramanian’s agentic AI division has operated as a test case for running Amazon like a startup, with small teams shipping products in months that once took a year, as GeekWire reported in June.
He’ll continue overseeing the teams behind Kiro, Amazon Quick, and AWS Transform, while taking on new areas including neurosymbolic AI and a recently announced service called AWS Context, which builds a knowledge graph from a company’s existing data so AI agents can query it.
The expansion builds on moves already underway, including the hiring in May of former Microsoft security exec Shawn Bice to lead AWS’s Automated Reasoning Group, which uses mathematical techniques to verify that AI agents are doing what they’re supposed to do.
It also coincides with a broader reshuffling of Amazon’s AI strategy and teams.
Amazon laid off employees in its artificial general intelligence organization last week and confirmed the closure of its San Francisco AGI site, but noted that its frontier model research will continue under Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon through its acquisition of robotics startup Covariant.
Business Insider reported Monday that Amazon is winding down most of its in-house Nova foundation models, including its high-end Premier and Omni models, and concentrating engineering talent and computing resources on a smaller number of frontier efforts.
Sivasubramanian’s expanded role is separate from the AGI changes, and the two organizations operate independently of one another within Amazon. But the net effect is that Amazon is narrowing its work in frontier models while expanding its efforts in AI applications and services.
This mirrors a larger pattern across the industry, as big AI providers look to ensure the billions they’re sinking into chips and data centers pay off in customer outcomes and business growth.
Analytici čekají, že Amazon ve 2. čtvrtletí vykáže tržby 196,02 miliardy USD a zisk na akcii 1,82 USD. Firma zároveň očekává tržby 194 až 199 miliard USD.
Analysts expect the e-commerce giant to report Q2 revenue of $196.02 billion, up from $167.70 billion in last year’s Q2, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
The company has beaten analyst estimates for revenue in seven straight quarters and in nine of the last 10 quarters overall.
Analysts expect Amazon Q2 earnings per share of $1.82, up from $1.68 in last year’s Q2.
The Seattle-based company has beaten analyst estimates for earnings per share in nine of the last 10 quarters. Guidance calls for revenue to be between $194 billion and $199 billion. The company did not provide earnings per share guidance.
Amazon Analyst RatingsHere are some of the most recent analyst ratings on Amazon.com stock and their price targets:
UBS: Maintained Buy rating, lowered price target from $333 to $305 BMO Capital: Maintained Outperform rating, raised price target from $355 to $360 Mizuho: Maintained Outperform rating, lowered price target from $325 to $320 Wedbush: Maintained Outperform rating, with $293 price target Wells Fargo: Maintained Overweight rating, raised price target from $313 to $322 Amazon Q2: Key Items to WatchAmazon posted double-digit revenue growth of 17% year-over-year in the first quarter, with the main segments of North America (+12%), International (+19%) and Amazon Web Services (+28%) all seeing double-digit growth.
AWS has been a standout performer in recent quarters, also posting revenue growth of 24% in the fourth quarter. The company said AWS growth in the first quarter was the fastest growth in 15 quarters.
The cloud segment is getting closer to passing International revenue and becoming the second-largest revenue driver each quarter.
AWS will be a key focus area for investors and analysts.
Another key will be any commentary on AI spending and AI monetization as the big technology companies look to show that their large capex is paying off in areas like revenue and margins.
Prime Video Bets On Blockbusters And Live SportsThe company’s Prime Video segment saw "Project Hail Mary" as a box office hit in March and likely into Q2.
"Masters of the Universe" didn’t perform as hot in theaters, with $113.8 million in global box office.
The hit show "Off Campus" saw huge viewership in the month of May, as did the final season of "The Boys."
NBA and NBA Playoffs coverage by Prime Video in April could also help boost overall advertising revenue for the company with live sports content being a key driver for this area.
Amazon is one of four Magnificent Seven stocks reporting this week and is also a key component of the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Here is Amazon’s place in three ETFs that track those indexes:
Strong earnings and guidance, along with a positive reaction to capex by investors, could provide a boost for those ETFs and the overall market.
Price ActionAmazon stock is up 0.4% to $231.82 on Wednesday versus a 52-week trading range of $196.00 to $278.56. The stock price is up 2.4% year-to-date in 2026.
Photo: Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) is set to report its second quarter 2026 results on July 30, with UBS lowering its price target to $305 from $333 while maintaining a ‘Buy’ rating as it expects continued strength from Amazon Web Services and improving e-commerce profitability.
The UBS analysts wrote that the price target reduction reflects expectations for higher capital expenditures in 2027 and beyond due to rising component costs and increased demand for infrastructure.
The analysts also adjusted near-term AWS revenue expectations after moving OpenAI’s initial use of Amazon’s Trainium chips from the fourth quarter of 2026 into early 2027, shifting approximately $3 billion in revenue out of this year.
Despite the near-term adjustment, UBS highlighted AWS as a key driver of its bullish outlook, noting that it believes the market is underestimating the cloud unit’s backlog and revenue growth potential in the second half of 2026 and into 2027.
UBS forecasts AWS revenue growth of 36% in 2026, ahead of the Street estimate of 31%, and expects growth of 48% in 2027 compared with consensus expectations of 30%.
The analysts wrote that its largest divergence from consensus remains Amazon’s 2027 operating income outlook, which UBS estimates will be approximately 49% above current Street expectations.
UBS’s investment thesis is centered on continued AWS growth acceleration as Amazon expands capacity, alongside potential market share gains in e-commerce driven by improving service levels, including broader same-day delivery and increased investment in groceries.
The firm also expects improving unit economics to support faster margin expansion in Amazon’s retail business, as growth in units sold continues to outpace cost growth. In addition, UBS pointed to Amazon’s Prime Video advertising opportunity, highlighting the potential for higher-margin revenue growth as the service scales globally through partnerships and live sports offerings.
UBS maintained its ‘Buy’ rating, writing that Amazon’s valuation remains attractive, with the stock trading at around 14 times its updated 2027 earnings estimate. The firm argued that a premium asset such as Amazon should not trade at a discount to the broader market multiple.
The revised $305 price target, which implies upside from current levels of about $228, is based on a 30 times price-to-free cash flow multiple applied to UBS’s estimate of $109.9 billion in free cash flow from the third quarter of 2027 through the second quarter of 2028.
Amazon čeká po výsledcích za 2. čtvrtletí prudký pohyb, protože trh sleduje hlavně růst AWS a dopad masivních investic do AI. Opce naznačují zhruba 6% pohyb oběma směry, tedy asi 15 USD.
Amazon stock NASDAQ:AMZN could swing about $15 after its July 30 earnings as investors decide whether accelerating artificial-intelligence demand is beginning to justify the company’s unprecedented infrastructure spending.
Options prices imply a move of roughly 6% in either direction from about $231, creating a potential range near $217 to $246. The shares are approximately flat in 2026 and 17% below their May high.
The options market is signalling uncertainty because investors must judge growth and spending together, rather than relying on the usual combination of an earnings beat and upbeat revenue guidance alone this quarter.
Wall Street expects second-quarter revenue of about $196.75 billion and AWS sales near $40.49 billion.
Yet headline growth may not decide the reaction.
Amazon must show that cloud revenue is accelerating without margins collapsing under a capital-expenditure programme expected to reach $200 billion this year.
AWS revenue grew 28% to $37.6 billion in the first quarter, its fastest expansion in 15 quarters. Visible Alpha expects second-quarter sales around $40.5 billion, implying growth above 30%.
“AWS is the story, and AI is driving AWS,” Morningstar senior equity analyst Dan Romanoff wrote ahead of the report.
He said investors should focus on growth, backlog, capacity additions and utilisation, while warning that depreciation could weigh on cloud margins and Amazon’s overall profitability.
Bank of America raised its AWS growth forecast to 33% from 31%, while estimating total revenue of $198.8 billion and operating income of $24.1 billion.
KeyBanc analyst Justin Patterson expects AWS growth near 31% through 2026 and 2027 and raised his Amazon target to $335.
Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan, who also carries a $335 target, forecasts approximately 33% growth this year and 35% in 2027.
Growth of 32% to 33% would support the bull case. A result around 30% may merely meet expectations, while anything below that could disappoint if profitability also weakens.
Amazon’s trailing operating cash flow increased 30% to $148.5 billion in the first quarter, but free cash flow plunged to $1.2 billion from $25.9 billion.
The company attributed the decline mainly to property and equipment purchases supporting AI.
Wedbush analysts expect “continued heavy investment” in Amazon’s chips and satellite-internet network. Another spending increase could therefore eclipse an otherwise strong report.
AWS margin is critical. Visible Alpha expects 33.8%, down from 37.7% in the first quarter but above 32.9% a year earlier. Estimates range from 30.9% to 38.2%, illustrating uncertainty over the expansion’s cost.
Investors may tolerate a margin near 34% if AWS growth reaches 32% or better.
A steeper contraction alongside higher capital spending would suggest Amazon is purchasing cloud growth at an increasingly heavy price.
Expected second-quarter earnings should not be compared directly with first-quarter earnings of $2.78 a share.
That result included a $16.8 billion pre-tax gain on Amazon’s Anthropic investment.
Amazon guided for second-quarter sales of $194 billion to $199 billion and operating income of $20 billion to $24 billion, assuming Prime Day occurred during the period.
Bank of America expects only a “modest” retail lift from the event.
The larger issue is whether Prime Day pulled purchases forward, weakening the September quarter.
Analysts expect third-quarter revenue guidance broadly between $200.5 billion and $205.5 billion.
Amazon could outperform the implied range if AWS grows 32% to 33%, margins hold near 34%, operating income exceeds guidance and spending remains controlled.
The shares could fall despite a headline beat if cloud growth disappoints, margins contract sharply, capital expenditure rises or third-quarter guidance is soft.
Amazon čeká silnější růst AWS: analytici nyní odhadují meziroční růst tržeb na 31–33 %, Bank of America až na 33 %. V prvním čtvrtletí AWS rostl o 28 %.
Amazon (AMZN -0.19%) is set to report its second-quarter earnings on Thursday, July 30, and expectations are high, especially for the AWS cloud services business. For example, analysts at Bank of America recently raised their AWS growth forecast to 33% year-over-year, specifically calling out demand from Anthropic and OpenAI workloads.
This would be a significant acceleration from the 28% growth rate the commerce and tech giant reported in the first quarter and would likely be taken as a positive sign by investors. But I'm going to make the bold prediction that even these lofty expectations aren't enough -- in fact, I predict that AWS revenue growth could come in at 35% or more.
Image source: Getty Images.
Amazon's second-quarter earnings: What the market expects As mentioned, Amazon reports earnings on Thursday (after the market's close), and analysts expect about $197 billion in total revenue and $1.82 in earnings per share, which would be 8% higher than a year ago.
When it comes to AWS, expectations vary depending on who you ask, but virtually all analysts expect to see acceleration compared to the first quarter. Most reputable analyst forecasts expect AWS revenue growth in the 31%-33% range.
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So, why am I predicting an even better number? For one thing, I agree that the demand from Anthropic and OpenAI is likely to be a big driver of second-quarter growth. And AWS revenue growth has already been accelerating -- in fact, the 28% revenue growth rate AWS posted in the first quarter was the fastest in nearly four years.
The most important number isn't AWS top line growth Don't get me wrong. If AWS posts a blowout number, it could make or break the market's reaction to Amazon's earnings report. But the AWS growth all by itself isn't the full story -- it's how efficiently Amazon is spending its money to achieve said growth.
In February, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy guided for $200 billion in capex for 2026, most of which will be spent on AI infrastructure. And while Amazon can certainly afford to spend this money, the big question on investors' minds has been whether it will produce an adequate return for the company. In other words, will the growth (and profits) that Amazon produces justify such a large price tag?
To put it mildly, accelerating AWS growth would be a big step in the right direction, showing investors that the juice is worth the squeeze. And if AWS can report better-than-expected growth without an alarming increase in projected capex, it would be even better. But when the earnings report is released, it will be important to pay close attention to AWS's growth and the cost of that growth.
Amazon prodal dluhopisy za 25 miliard USD, aby financoval rozšiřování AI infrastruktury. Na rok 2026 plánuje kapitálové výdaje ve výši 200 miliard USD.
In 2026, one of the dominant investment themes is concern about how much large tech companies like Amazon (AMZN -0.19%) are spending on building artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. That concern is reflected in the Amazon stock price; as of this writing, shares are up less than 2% so far this year.
Amazon's recent bond sale and capital expenditure plans, however, suggest that the company has a far different concern than most of the market.
Andy Jassy, Amazon (AMZN), CEO. Image source: Amazon.
Ballooning spending In early July, Amazon sold $25 billion worth of bonds to continue fueling the build-out of AI infrastructure. In addition, its capital expenditures for 2026 are projected at $200 billion, a significant increase from the $131 billion spent in 2025. As a point of comparison, Meta Platforms expects its capital expenditures to fall between $125 billion and $145 billion, while Alphabet plans to spend between $195 billion and $205 billion.
The worry is that the spending may take years to yield any meaningful return. The more extreme concern is that AI will become a money pit with almost no return, and that large tech companies have ultimately wasted years of time, resources, and capital on it.
That said, Amazon clearly has a different fear.
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Missing out In tech, history is littered with missed opportunities. One classic example is when Blockbuster could have bought Netflix in 2000 for $50 million. Blockbuster went on to file for bankruptcy in 2010, while Netflix today is worth more than $291 billion.
That fear of missing out or making one critical mistake, like not investing enough in building AI infrastructure, can help explain why Amazon is spending so much. It also explains why there may seem to be a disconnect: Investors worry it is spending too much, while Amazon fears it's not spending enough.
In his letter to shareholders in April, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy addressed the spending head-on:
AI will reinvent every customer experience, and there will be a slew of new experiences only possible because of AI. I've followed the public debate on whether this technology is overhyped, whether we're in 'a bubble,' and if the margins and ROIC will be appealing. My strong conviction, at least for Amazon, is that the answers are no, no, and yes.
Jassy went on to say, "AI is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where the current growth is unprecedented and the future growth even bigger."
Jassy could be right, as this may still just be the early stages before the full AI growth story takes shape, and Amazon clearly doesn't want to miss out. The trade-off for having the patience to let those investments pay off is that Amazon may lag the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.21%), as it has this year.
Amazon může při výsledcích za 30. července vykázat výrazný účetní zisk z podílu v Anthropic, který Bank of America označuje za hlavní tahoun reportu. Hodnota podílu by mohla prudce vzrůst po IPO Anthropic při valuaci kolem 965 miliard USD.
It's Amazon's (AMZN -0.19%) turn to step up to the earnings podium. The online retailer founded by Jeff Bezos is expected to show strong growth in its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, and is likely to increase its planned $200 billion capital expenditure budget as memory and storage products become more expensive.
I'm fully expecting Amazon to post solid second-quarter earnings on Thursday, July 30. But considering that investors seem to have the yips right now about spiraling data center costs, I expect the stock to drop due to capital expenditure growth and shrinking free cash flow. Yet there's one item that certainly will cause investors to smile: the company's massive gains from its stake in the start-up AI company Anthropic.
Amazon was an early investor in Anthropic, the company behind Claude, and put $13 billion in with the option to invest $20 billion more. That $13 billion stake is now worth much more, given that Anthropic is considering going public at a valuation of around $1 trillion. In a research note, Bank of America analysts point to Amazon's stake in Anthropic as a significant driver in its upcoming earnings report, generating a strong mark-to-market gain.
Let's see how Amazon's stake in Anthropic has grown, and what investors should be looking for in Amazon's Q2 update.
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. Image source: Amazon.
Amazon is winning big with Anthropic Amazon's investment in Anthropic includes an initial $8 billion investment in 2024, followed by another $5 billion in 2026. Published reports indicate that Amazon has 21% stake in the AI company.
However, at the end of the first quarter, Amazon valued its Anthropic stake at $74.2 billion -- $42.2 billion in convertible notes and $32 billion in nonvoting preferred stock. That would imply Anthropic had a value at that time of about $353.3 billion.
Last month, Anthropic filed a confidential IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission that places Anthropic's value at $965 billion. That would push the value of Amazon's 21% stake to $202.6 billion.
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Putting Amazon's gains into perspective In the first quarter, Amazon reported net income of $30.25 billion -- a solid number, with much of that coming from its fast-growing Amazon Web Services. But it could be looking at a much larger gain -- on paper -- in this quarter just from its Anthropic stake, which appears set to increase by $128.4 billion in a single quarter.
That would certainly take the sting out of any dip in Amazon's stock price post-earnings. Big tech stocks have been hammered so far this week on fears of overspending on data centers and AI infrastructure, with Alphabet stock dropping 6% post-earnings after it raised its capex spending from $185 billion to $200 billion. Tesla fell even further after reporting a negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion for the quarter.
Amazon may suffer the same fate when it reports earnings. But investors who focus only on capex will miss the bigger picture. Anthropic's rapid growth is creating tremendous value for Amazon, and in the July 30 earnings report, investors may learn that its stake in the AI start-up is one of its most valuable assets.
Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Patrick Sanders has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Jeff Bezos řekl, že vlastní čipový byznys Amazonu se rýsuje jako jeho další pilíř vedle Marketplace, Prime a AWS. Amazon do AI čipů Trainium a Inferentia investuje už přes deset let.
by John Cook on Jul 28, 2026 at 9:33 amJuly 28, 2026 at 9:33 am
Amazon’s next pillar could be built on a foundation of silicon.
In a new interview with Fortune, Amazon founder and Executive Chair Jeff Bezos says the company’s custom chip business is on track to become one of Amazon’s most durable businesses, placing it alongside Marketplace, Prime, and Amazon Web Services as a core pillar of the company.
“A few of our offerings have become durable pillars, things like Marketplace and Prime and AWS,” Bezos told Fortune. “What I see right now is that our chips business, our silicon business, is lining up to be our next pillar.”
The comments offer one of Bezos’ clearest public endorsements yet of Amazon’s push to design its own chips for artificial intelligence, an increasingly important strategy as demand for AI computing soars and companies look for alternatives to Nvidia’s dominant processors.
More than a decade of investment Amazon has invested heavily in custom silicon through Annapurna Labs, the Israeli chip startup it acquired in 2015. The company now develops its own AI chips under the Trainium and Inferentia brands, designed to train and run large language models while reducing costs for customers using Amazon Web Services.
AWS has positioned the chips as a lower-cost alternative for AI developers. AWS has positioned the chips as a lower-cost alternative for AI developers. Anthropic trains and runs its Claude models on Trainium, and OpenAI has committed to consume about 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity, ramping in 2027.
The company disclosed revenue for its in-house data center chips for the first time earlier this year, and since then its Trainium, Graviton, and Nitro chips have grown to a combined annual run rate of more than $20 billion. Amazon has been pouring billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, including new data centers and custom networking hardware.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has repeatedly argued that demand for AI computing will remain strong for years, making investments in chips, servers, networking equipment, and power generation essential to the company’s long-term growth.
In an earnings release earlier this year, Jassy signaled plans to pour a record $200 billion in capital expenditures across Amazon in 2026, citing “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.”
The real potential for Amazon’s chips business could come in going beyond the walls of its own data centers. Jassy wrote in his annual letter to shareholders this year that it’s “quite possible” Amazon will sell racks of its internally developed chips to third parties in the future.
Amazon’s fourth pillar? This discussion about Amazon’s “pillars” goes back to Bezos’ 2014 letter to shareholders, where he described four characteristics of what he called a “dreamy” business: “Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it’s durable in time — with the potential to endure for decades.”
AWS, Marketplace, and Prime are considered the first three pillars. The question of what could become Amazon’s “fourth pillar” has been debated for more than a decade, with areas including shipping and logistics and Alexa cited as contenders in the past.
The company’s big bet on silicon also was emphasized by Jassy in the Fortune piece. He told the magazine that chips are often the key to computing. “The growth in AI has been so significant, but we have a chips business that we built over the last decade here that is growing very quickly,” he said.
The profile appeared alongside Fortune’s release of its 2026 Global 500 ranking, which placed Amazon at No. 1 for the first time, ending Walmart’s 12-year run as the world’s largest company by revenue after Amazon surpassed $700 billion in annual sales, as reported previously.
Walmart fell to No. 2, followed by State Grid of China, UnitedHealth Group, and Saudi Aramco. The magazine reports that Amazon is on pace to be the first trillion dollar company by revenue.
Amazon reports Q2 2026 earnings on Thursday afternoon. Check back with GeekWire for coverage.
Rogers Communications a Prime Video uzavřely 12letou sublicenční dohodu, která od sezóny 2026-27 dá Prime Video exkluzivní práva na středeční noční zápasy NHL v Kanadě. Součástí jsou i vybrané série play off Stanley Cupu.
Item 1 of 2 The Rogers Building, the green-topped corporate campus of Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Communications is seen in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada July 9, 2022. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo
[1/2]The Rogers Building, the green-topped corporate campus of Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Communications is seen in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada July 9, 2022. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
July 28 (Reuters) - Rogers Communications (RCIb.TO), opens new tab and Amazon.com's (AMZN.O), opens new tab Prime Video on Monday signed a 12-year sublicensing agreement granting the streaming platform exclusive rights to broadcast Wednesday night national NHL games in Canada beginning with the 2026-27 season.
The deal also grants Prime Video exclusive rights to select Stanley Cup playoff series and expands its NHL offering in Canada, where Rogers last year renewed national NHL media rights through the 2037-38 season.
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Here are more details:
The package includes at least 26 national regular-season games annually, starting September 30, 2026.
The agreement comes as streaming platforms invest heavily in live sports rights, one of the few categories of programming that continues to draw large real-time audiences.
Sportsnet will retain exclusive English-language rights to more than 500 national NHL games per season, including most playoff coverage.
It builds on Rogers' broader 12-year NHL national media-rights renewal covering the 2026-27 to 2037-38 seasons.
Rogers is one of Canada's largest sports media companies, with major sports broadcasting rights and ownership stakes in leading professional franchises.
Financial terms of the sublicensing deal were not disclosed.
Reporting by Rashika Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid
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Amazon před výsledky za Q1 vykazuje silný růst: tržby v Q1 stouply o 16,6 % na 181,52 mld. USD a provozní marže dosáhla rekordu 13,1 %. AWS rostl o 28 % na 37,6 mld. USD.
Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) setup heading into July 30 earnings looks compelling. The company trades at roughly the same multiple as the S&P 500, yet the business is compounding across four segments at double-digit rates while its cloud franchise reaccelerates. Wall Street analysts give the stock 47 buys, 15 strong buys, 4 holds, and zero sells at an average price target of $313.13, implying 32.25% upside from its $232.11 price. Here are 3 of the biggest reasons to buy Amazon stock today:
Reason #1: Amazon Offers Above-Market Growth at a Market-Level P/E AMZN trades at a forward P/E of 27, roughly in line with the broad market. Shares are up just 0.56% year to date despite Q1 revenue growth of 16.6% YoY to $181.52B, an operating margin that hit 13.1% (a company record), and Q1 EPS of $2.78 versus $1.73 expected. Investors are essentially paying market-multiple prices for above-market growth. Polymarket puts odds of an earnings beat at 95.2%.
Reason #2: AWS Is Growing at Its Fastest Rate in 15 Quarters AWS printed $37.6 billion at 28% YoY growth, the fastest in 15 quarters, on a $150 billion run rate. The custom-silicon stack crossed a $20 billion annual run rate with triple-digit growth, and AWS ended Q1 with a $364 billion backlog. Anthropic committed over $100 billion post-quarter, on top of Trainium commitments totaling over $225 billion.
Reason #3: Advertising and Retail Add Two More Growth Engines Advertising is now a $70B+ TTM business growing 22-24%, Stores unit growth reached 15%, the highest since COVID lockdowns, and grocery gross sales topped $150 billion in 2025. Q2 guidance calls for net sales of $194B to $199B and operating income of $20B to $24B.
Amazon Is Funding Its AI Buildout With Operating Cash Flow Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) trades at a nearly identical P/E of 28 but lacks Amazon’s advertising and retail flywheels, and MSFT’s Q3 capex hit $30.88 billion, up 84% YoY.
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Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) grew Cloud 82% in Q2 2026, faster than AWS, but produced negative $5.86 billion of free cash flow and raised roughly $70 billion in equity and debt to fund the buildout. Amazon generated $26.03 billion of Q1 operating cash flow, up 53%, funding its AI buildout from the P&L.
Why Amazon’s $200 Billion Spending Plan Should Pay Off Amazon’s enormous AI investment program is the primary risk heading into Thursday’s Q2 report. The company spent $43.2 billion in Q1 cash capex, and prediction markets are pricing 95% odds of 2026 outlays above $200 billion.
However, AWS ran at a 37.7% operating margin in Q1, Trainium is booked with $225 billion in commitments, and Andy Jassy told investors, “We have high confidence this will be monetized well, as we already have customer commitments for a substantial portion of it and that it will yield compelling operating margins and ROIC.” Thursday’s report will show whether those investments can sustain faster growth without sacrificing Amazon’s newly established margin gains.
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Amazon přestavuje AI strategii a utlumuje většinu vlastních modelů Nova včetně Premier, Omni, Reel a Canvas. Zaměřuje se na nový frontier model pod vedením Frontier Model Research (FMR).
Peter DeSantis, Amazon's SVP of Foundational AI Models, Custom Silicon, and Quantum Computing Bloomberg/Getty Images Amazon is overhauling its AI strategy, winding down many in-house models, reorganizing teams, and focusing engineers on a new strategy to compete at the frontier, according to people familiar with the matter.
The changes follow layoffs in Amazon's Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, organization last week and the shutdown of AGI Lab, a research group it created in 2024 after hiring most of the team behind AI startup Adept.
The restructuring suggests Amazon is refocusing its AI strategy. Rather than investing across a number of text, image, and video models, the company is concentrating engineering talent and scarce computing resources on its highest priorities.
"KTLO" Amazon has begun deprecating most of its in-house flagship Nova models, including the high-end Premier and Omni models, Reel video-generation model, and Canvas image-generation model, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some Amazon employees described these models as operating in "KTLO," short for "keep the lights on," an engineering term for software that remains supported for existing customers but is no longer a major development priority.
FMRAccording to the people familiar with the matter, resources have increasingly moved away from the existing Nova models and toward a new frontier-model effort led by researcher Pieter Abbeel, who came to Amazon through the acquisition of AI robotics startup Covariant. Known internally as Frontier Model Research, or FMR, the initiative has become a top priority this year.
Under that effort, Amazon is developing a new flagship foundation model that is expected to debut at this year's re:Invent annual conference, which typically happens in the fall.
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the company has long supported AI models in production for extended periods because customers depend on them, and said Amazon remains committed to investing in frontier models.
"AI models remain one of the most important things we're working on, and that hasn't changed," the spokesperson said. "As with any AI portfolio, we continually evolve our model lineup based on what customers need, and we always provide customers clear guidance and migration paths as models advance."
Job cuts and departuresThe organizational change does not necessarily mean Amazon is abandoning Nova altogether. The remaining Nova portfolio includes the Nova 2 Sonic and Nova 2 Lite foundation models, Nova Forge, a service for building and customizing models, and Nova Act, Amazon's AI agent technology. Indeed, the new model that FMR is developing could emerge under the Nova brand.
Instead, the shift reflects a broader reorganization of Amazon's AI efforts that has unfolded over the past year.
Amazon created its AGI organization in 2023 to build foundation models and other technologies capable of powering future AI products across the company. Rohit Prasad, a longtime Alexa executive, led the organization until he departed in December 2025.
The AGI organization oversaw several specialized groups. One was AGI Lab, which Amazon established in 2024 after hiring AI startup Adept's cofounders and licensing its technology. Led by Adept cofounder David Luan, the lab focused on long-term AI research. Luan left Amazon in February, and the company shut down the AGI Lab last week as part of the latest reorganization.
Separately, Frontier Model Research was created within the AGI organization to develop Amazon's next generation of frontier AI models. After Prasad's departure, Amazon tapped Abbeel to lead the group. People familiar with the transition said FMR has since become the organization's primary focus.
DeSantis narrows the focusThe broader AGI organization was also reorganized. In December, Amazon placed it under senior vice president Peter DeSantis, combining it with the company's silicon development and quantum computing organizations.
People familiar with the transition said DeSantis has pursued a more focused AI strategy than his predecessor. Under Prasad, Amazon pursued multiple model families spanning text, image, and video generation. DeSantis, however, has concentrated Amazon's engineering talent and computing resources on a smaller number of frontier-model efforts, they said.
Employees said they have received little guidance about the long-term future of Nova models, fueling uncertainty across the organization.
The layoffs surprised many employees, the people said, because frontier model researchers had long been among Amazon's most prized technical talent. Employees said AGI also operated differently from the rest of the company, maintaining separate leveling and compensation systems to compete more aggressively for AI talent.
The changes mark a major shift in Amazon's AI ambitions. Just last year, AWS used its re:Invent conference to unveil Nova Omni 2 as its flagship multimodal reasoning model. In 2023, CEO Andy Jassy personally championed AGI as the team that would build Amazon's most ambitious foundation models, prompting the creation of six new research groups.
Less than three years later, the organization is retiring parts of its flagship Nova lineup and reorganizing around a new frontier model effort.
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Eugene is Business Insider’s Chief Tech Correspondent, where he leads coverage of Amazon. His reporting spans the company’s retail operations, AWS, Alexa, and its secretive internal work culture.Previously, he worked at CNBC, Fortune Magazine Korea, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun. He holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.In 2022, Eugene broke a story uncovering Amazon’s practice of deceptively enrolling customers in Prime and deliberately making cancellation difficult. A year later, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company, citing his reporting. That case culminated in a record $2.5 billion settlement in 2025.His reporting has earned multiple honors, including the SF Press Club’s Bay Area Journalism Award and SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award.Eugene lives in the Bay Area. Contact him via email at [email protected], or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. ExpertiseAmazon, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, e-commerce, and cloud computing.Popular ArticlesAmazon:Internal Amazon emails give an exclusive look at how CEO Andy Jassy has started to run the company, with obsessive attention to the retail business and what some employees feel is micromanagingAndy Jassy will be the next CEO of Amazon. Insiders dish on what it's like to work for Jeff Bezos' successor, who built AWS into a $40 billion business.Internal documents show Amazon has for years knowingly tricked people into signing up for Prime subscriptions. 'We have been deliberately confusing,' former employee says.Inside Amazon's flailing brick-and-mortar ambitions: missed projections, pressure to cut costs, and a war with Whole FoodsInside Amazon's complex employee-review system, where workers feel left in the dark and managers expect to give 5% of reports bad reviewsAfter 28 years, 'Day 2' finally arrives at AmazonAWS, Alexa, healthcare:Inside Amazon's struggle to break into the lucrative market for SaaS business applications, including an internal pitch to buy $38 billion HubSpotInside Amazon's struggle to crack Nvidia's AI-chip dominanceAmazon's AI data center dream runs into the reality of 'zombie' facilities, higher costs, and labor shortagesAmazon is gutting its voice assistant, Alexa. Employees describe a division in crisis and huge losses on 'a wasted opportunity.'Amazon is working on a new 'Remarkable Alexa,' but internal politics and technical issues plague the projectAmazon projected huge losses from its healthcare business in 2024, but strong sales growth, internal document reveals
Amazon Generative AI Artificial Intelligence More Big Tech Exclusive
The most interesting thing about Amazon (AMZN -0.33%) and its upcoming second-quarter earnings report isn’t the growth of its web-based retail store. It’s not even the continued growth of Amazon Web Services, the biggest cloud computing company in the world.
Instead, investors will be looking at Amazon’s spending, particularly on servers, storage, and other infrastructure to build out its AI footprint. Amazon previously announced it would spend a mind-boggling $200 billion on capital expenditures this year, and all signs point to that number rising when it reports earnings after the close on July 30.
Here’s why.
Image source: Amazon.
Wall Street is focused on AI spendingWe are deep in earnings season, and one of the major themes so far has been spending by big tech stocks -- and the market’s negative reaction to that. Alphabet’s (GOOG +2.33%) (GOOGL +2.13%) second-quarter report on July 22 showed that it grew revenue by 24% to $119.79 billion, and its Google Cloud revenue jumped by 82% to $24.76 billion. But investors fixated on Alphabet’s announcement that it would increase its capex from $185 billion to $200 billion, which would match Amazon’s own plans. Alphabet stock fell 6% on the news.
Then there’s Tesla (TSLA -1.43%), another member of the Magnificent Seven grouping. Tesla doesn’t have a cloud computing business. Still, it is investing heavily in AI to develop and train AI models for its Optimus robots and full self-driving technology. Tesla also reported a big revenue spike in its Q2 earnings, up 26% year over year to $28.23 billion. But the company’s operating margins shrank to just 1.4%, adjusted earnings of $0.33 were far below expectations, and the company reported negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion in the quarter.
Tesla’s chief financial officer, Vaibhav Taneja, told analysts that the free cash flow shortfall was because the company’s capex more than doubled sequentially in the quarter, and would continue to grow in the second half of the year and through 2028. The company projected capex of $25 billion this year and announced plans to borrow up to $30 billion.
You can guess what happened next. The market shrugged off the revenue jump and focused on the shrinking margins, negative cash flow, and borrowing plans. Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 20% since its earnings report last week.
What to expect from Amazon’s earnings reportAmazon has had an up-and-down year, and the stock is just above water so far. But it’s far from immune to the challenges facing big tech right now, and Amazon stock already dropped 5% in the last week following the Alphabet and Tesla reports.
The best thing about Amazon for the last several years has been Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon has the largest share of the global cloud computing market at 28%, and it's been investing heavily as companies increasingly turn to cloud environments to train and run AI programs.
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AWS generated $37.58 billion in sales in the first quarter, up 28% from a year ago. Operating income from AWS was $14.16 billion -- 59% of the entire company’s operating income.
Investors will want to see how Amazon improved, but the biggest questions will come from Amazon’s guidance, and whether the company raises its capex budget -- and by how much. CEO Andy Jassy has said Amazon will be a “meaningful leader” in AI. “We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch,” he said in April.
Tesla and Alphabet’s reports are important clues that AI spending is accelerating, not decreasing. There’s more evidence in the strong earnings reports of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s largest chip foundry, and ASML, which makes machines to create chips. Both companies recently raised their full-year guidance due to strong demand for AI infrastructure.
You also have the evidence from memory and storage companies, such as Western Digital, Sandisk, and Micron Technology, that are seeing huge increases in storage and memory products from data centers.
When you put all these data points together, you can make a reasonable hypothesis that Amazon will likely increase its capex again. Add that to another data point -- Amazon will likely see negative free cash flow (FCF) this quarter, as its trailing 12-month FCF fell to $1.2 billion in Q1, down 95% from a year ago.
Any combination of Amazon raising capex, showing negative free cash flow, or taking on new debt -- could pressure the stock. If all three happen, as they did with Tesla -- then Amazon shareholders could have a very rough day.
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
July 27 (Reuters) - Amazon's (AMZN.O), opens new tab Leo has proposed a new constellation of up to 5,105 satellites to provide direct-to-device voice and data connectivity, joining a growing race among satellite operators to beam cellular service directly to smartphones.
The proposed direct-to-device network would provide voice, messaging, data and emergency services in areas beyond the reach of terrestrial cellular networks, with deployment beginning in 2028.
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The service will partner with mobile network operators globally and use Globalstar's mobile satellite spectrum following Amazon's agreement to acquire Globalstar (GSAT.O), opens new tab earlier this year.
The move expands Amazon's satellite ambitions beyond broadband internet and intensifies competition in the direct-to-device market, with SpaceX (SPCX.O), opens new tab, AST SpaceMobile (ASTS.O), opens new tab and Lynk Global also developing satellite-to-phone services.
A growing shortage of rocket launch capacity has, however, become one of the biggest constraints to deploying a wave of next generation of satellite constellations.
Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli
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Amazon (AMZN -0.70%), the world's largest e-commerce and cloud infrastructure company, will post its second-quarter earnings report on July 30. Analysts expect its revenue and EPS to rise 17% and 8%, respectively, year over year. Should you buy Amazon's stock, which has stayed nearly flat year to date, before it releases that closely watched report?
Image source: Getty Images.
What are the catalysts and challenges for Amazon's stock? Amazon generates most of its revenue from its e-commerce business, but most of its profits come from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's largest cloud infrastructure platform. AWS controlled nearly a third of the cloud platform market last year, according to Canalys.
Its e-commerce business faces inflationary and competitive headwinds. Still, it's addressing those challenges by regionalizing its fulfillment network, automating its warehouses, adjusting its third-party seller fees, selling more everyday essentials, and launching low-cost storefronts.
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AWS is growing rapidly as more companies expand their cloud infrastructure to handle the latest AI applications. It hosts Bedrock, a platform that helps companies access multiple AI models, develops agentic AI tools, and produces custom AI chips. But to support that expansion, Amazon will boost its capex from $131.8 billion in 2025 to $200 billion in 2026, even as it prunes its workforce. That near-term pressure on margins makes its top-line growth less impressive.
However, Amazon is also expanding its higher-margin advertising business -- which sells integrated ads and promoted listings across its marketplace -- to offset that pressure. That business could eventually become a secondary profit engine alongside AWS.
Is Amazon's stock worth buying today? Amazon's stock has stayed flat this year because investors are concerned about the macro headwinds for its e-commerce business and its increased cloud and AI spending. But at the same time, its e-commerce and cloud businesses remain well-positioned to grow over the long term. That tug-of-war between the bulls and bears could continue through the rest of the year.
For 2026, analysts expect Amazon's revenue and EPS to grow 15% and 22%, respectively. Its stock still looks reasonably valued at 27 times forward earnings. So if you still believe in its long-term growth potential, it's safe to buy the stock as most investors fret over its near-term challenges. That said, any upward revisions to its full-year capex or warnings about the macro environment in its upcoming earnings report might cause its stock to drop, so it might be prudent to wait for the market's broader reaction before buying more shares.
Amazon zavírá své sanfranciské pracoviště AGI v rámci letošních propouštění, ale výzkum frontier modelů pokračuje. Novinka Nova Act zůstává dostupná na AWS.
by Todd Bishop on Jul 24, 2026 at 12:46 pmJuly 24, 2026 at 12:49 pm
GeekWire File Photo Amazon is closing its San Francisco AGI site as part of the layoffs it made this week in its artificial general intelligence organization, but said its frontier model research lab will continue.
A company spokesperson confirmed the news of the site closure, which was first reported by The Information. Amazon’s frontier model research work will carry on under Pieter Abbeel, a UC Berkeley professor who joined Amazon in 2024 when the company licensed the technology and hired the team from Covariant, the robotics startup he co-founded.
The AGI Lab was founded in December 2024 and initially built around several dozen employees Amazon brought in from the startup Adept, including its co-founder and CEO David Luan.
The team grew to about 80 people at its peak, according to The Information, but more than a dozen of the Adept hires have since left, Luan among them. Earlier this week, Amazon confirmed it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs across the broader AGI organization.
Impacted employees will have the chance to explore other roles at Amazon, the spokesperson said, and the company is supporting them through that process.
Nova Act, the browser-agent model and service that came out of the group, remains available on AWS and in use by customers. More broadly, AWS has continued to build out its agentic AI lineup, including Bedrock AgentCore and applications like Kiro, Quick, Continuum and Transform.
The moves come as Amazon invests heavily in helping customers deploy AI, including a $1 billion AWS effort to embed engineers with businesses building AI agents. The initiative reflects an expanded industry focus toward putting agents and models to better use for customers.
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Moody’s varuje, že bezprecedentní výdaje na AI zhoršují úvěrovou kvalitu Amazonu, Meta, Alphabetu a dalších hyperscalerů. Kapitálové výdaje mají v roce 2026 dosáhnout 785 miliard USD a v příštím roce zhruba 1 bilionu USD.
The race to build artificial intelligence infrastructure at a trillion-dollar annual clip is eroding the free cash flow and increasing balance-sheet risk at so-called hyperscalers, warned Moody's Ratings.
In a research note released this week, Moody's said that the spending surge is forcing even the world's most cash-rich corporations like Alphabet and Microsoft to lean heavily on debt, stock sales and off-balance-sheet moves to fund their AI ambitions.
"Previously, these companies relied on asset-light structures centered on software, intellectual property, and scalable cloud services that required modest capital investment," Moody's said in the Wednesday note. "The transition from asset-light to asset-heavy models requires unprecedented levels of investment and capital raising."
The moves "threaten credit quality" for the six companies tracked by Moody's, which include Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle and CoreWeave, according to the report.
The ratings firm projects that capital expenditures — or capex, which are investment for physical assets like data centers — will hit $785 billion in 2026 before reaching about $1 trillion next year.
The shift breaks a decades-long Silicon Valley formula that created the world's most valuable companies. Software costs little to replicate, yielding fat profit margins and fortress balance sheets. Generative AI, by contrast, demands a vast physical footprint: warehouses crammed with expensive and energy-hungry servers and chips.
To finance the expansion, tech giants are increasingly turning to Wall Street, resulting in booming profits for the financial industry.
Direct debt across the six hyperscalers has reached approximately $460 billion, according to Moody's. Tech companies are also tapping public markets for cash, including Google-parent Alphabet, which last month announced an $85 billion equity sale.
Leasing data centersThe ratings firm noted that because AI hardware and infrastructure require massive upfront investment while revenue materializes over a longer time horizon, free cash flow across the sector is coming under pressure.
To keep direct debt off their balance sheets, hyperscalers are leaning on off-balance-sheet financing, mostly through long-term data center leases, the report explained.
Moody's said that lease commitments across the group have ballooned to $1.2 trillion. More than $820 billion of that total is from leases that haven't started yet, meaning the data centers are still being built.
While these obligations don't show up as traditional debt, Moody's says it considers them as debt-equivalent liabilities that will bind companies to significant rent payments down the line.
Despite the warning, Moody's noted that Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta retain among the strongest corporate balance sheets in the world, making it unlikely that their investment grade ratings are under imminent threat.
The immediate pressure is concentrated on lower-rated entities like Oracle and specialized AI cloud provider CoreWeave. Oracle carries a rating of Baa2 with a negative outlook, placing it just two notches above junk status.
Meanwhile, CoreWeave operates within the high-yield market with a Ba3 rating, relying on complex private debt structures to finance its GPU hardware fleets.
Circular ecosystem Moody's also pointed to structural circularity within the AI boom. Some of the multibillion-dollar backlogs reported by hyperscalers stem from strategic deals with pre-IPO artificial intelligence labs including OpenAI and Anthropic, Moody's noted.
The firms have invested billions into AI labs that, in turn, spend heavily on cloud computing from those same companies, creating what Moody's described as a circular AI ecosystem.
The overlapping relationships heighten risks because many of the industry's biggest companies are increasingly dependent on the same AI customers and the same assumptions about future demand, Moody's said.
Even so, the tech giants have significant strengths that help offset those risks.
Demand for AI computing remains robust, cloud businesses continue to grow and hyperscalers have signed hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term customer contracts that should provide predictable revenue. Those deals support the industry's largely-strong credit profiles, even amid the spending boom.
Still, investors should recognize that the tech industry's financial profile is undergoing a structural change unlike anything seen in the cloud era, according to Moody's.
"Investors will increasingly focus on these companies' ability to realize an adequate return on investment," the ratings firm said.
Amazon má 143 miliard USD v penězích a peněžních ekvivalentech a 364 miliard USD v dlouhodobých cloudových smlouvách, což podle článku tlumí obavy z vyšších kapitálových výdajů. Investice do infrastruktury sice krátkodobě tlačí na volný peněžní tok, ale mají přinést velmi ziskové výnosy do konce roku 2028.
SummaryWhile critics panic over increasing CapEx, Amazon’s $143 billion cash reserves generate enough in quarterly interest income to fund debt obligations.Amazon has $364 billion, and counting, in legally binding, long-term cloud contracts that ensure data center compute capacity is accounted for before construction completes.Though infrastructure investments have temporarily reduced short-term free cash flow, these assets are projected to deliver highly profitable returns by the end of 2028 and for many years to follow.Editor's note: Seeking Alpha is proud to welcome MarginMinded as a new contributing analyst. You can become one too! Share your best investment idea by submitting your article for review to our editors. Get published, earn money, and unlock exclusive SA Premium access.
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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of AMZN either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
I currently own shares in $AMZN. I do not own any options or other derivatives in AMZN. I will not buy/sell shares, options, or other derivatives of AMZN for the 72 hours defined above. I will not initiate any trades for this position per the 72 hours defined above.
Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.
Amazon bude od třetích stran vyžadovat označování obrázků a videí s „osobami vytvořenými pomocí AI“ v reakci na nový zákon v New Yorku. Na svém webu také přidá indikátor u položek, kde se takový obsah objeví.
Amazon is requiring that third-party sellers label any product images or videos that contain "AI-generated people" after New York recently passed a law mandating greater transparency around "synthetic performers" in ads.
The company informed sellers Wednesday of the policy change, according to a copy of the announcement viewed by CNBC. The policy directs sellers to tag images and any "A+ content," which refers to videos or other graphics on listing pages, with specific metadata keywords before they're uploaded.
"Recent legislation requires disclosure when images or videos in advertisements contain photorealistic AI-generated people," Amazon wrote in the announcement.
The New York law, which took effect last month, requires companies to disclose if "synthetic performers" are used in place of human actors in advertising. The legislation applies to "digitally-created media that appear as a real person." Governor Kathy Hochul described it as a "first-in-the-nation" law.
"Without notice that the content the public is viewing is not real, AI-generated synthetic performers and manipulated media can undermine one's ability to accurately distill fact from fiction," Hochul's office said in a release.
Amazon clarified in its announcement that the requirement doesn't apply to content featuring TV, video game and movie characters, or content that includes real people, even if they've been altered using AI.
The company said it will "add an indicator" to listings on its website, informing consumers that images or other content feature AI-generated people, "where applicable." It's unclear what criteria Amazon will apply when deciding when to display the label to shoppers.
Amazon didn't immediately provide a comment.
Amazon has embraced AI internally and it's increasingly infusing the technology across its portfolio. The company has optimized listing titles and details so they're more likely to be spotted by AI systems, invested in a recently rebranded assistant called Alexa for Shopping, and launched a feature that injects AI-generated products into its search bar in real time based on user queries.
More Amazon third-party sellers are using AI to generate text, images and other content for their listings, partly by using the company's tools.
Outside sellers are the engine behind Amazon's core retail business, accounting for more than 60% of goods sold on its marketplace.
There is no federal law requiring companies to disclose when advertising content has been created using AI.
States have taken steps to require greater transparency around AI content. Earlier this year, California began requiring large AI providers to embed watermarks in AI-generated images, video or other content.
Meta, TikTok, Pinterest and Google's YouTube have added AI-generated content labels to videos and images uploaded to their platforms. TikTok and Meta have recently been criticized for not adequately labeling ads that feature AI-generated influencers hawking dubious products, in some cases without a brand's knowledge.
TikTok has said it's taken steps to ban accounts that make misleading health claims, and Meta said it labels AI videos
Alphabet zvýšil výhled kapitálových výdajů na 195 až 205 miliard USD, protože poptávka po kapacitě převyšuje nabídku. Akcie společnosti následující den klesly o 6 %.
Big tech companies and spending on artificial intelligence and its infrastructure have been one of the biggest stories in the stock market this year, ever since Amazon (AMZN -4.53%), Alphabet (GOOG -6.68%) (GOOGL -6.80%), Microsoft, and Meta Platforms disclosed plans to spend $700 billion on capital expenditures this year.
Of that, Amazon was the biggest spender at $200 billion, with Alphabet close behind at $185 billion. But in the company’s second-quarter earnings call with analysts, Alphabet executives announced plans to join Amazon in the $200 billion club, spending its capex primarily on servers, connectivity, storage, and memory for data centers.
Alphabet stock fell 6% the next day. Will Amazon also raise its capex spending when it reports earnings on July 30? And just as importantly, will Amazon stock face the same fate as Alphabet?
Image source: Amazon.
Why is Alphabet raising capex?Alphabet, the parent company of Google, spent $44.9 billion on capex in the second quarter, with 60% of that on servers and 40% on data centers and networking equipment. It had previously projected full-year capex to be in a range of $180 billion to $190 billion; it now anticipates spending between $195 billion and $205 billion.
“We're still in a supply constraint environment. I think we've said this now for multiple quarters in a row, we are seeing very strong demand, both from external cloud customers as well as across the business. Our goal is to invest as long as we see an attractive return on that investment,” CFO Anat Ashkenazi said.
In short, Alphabet says that demand is outpacing computing capacity, even though Alphabet is accelerating its spending.
Overall earnings for Alphabet were exceptionally strong, with revenue of $119.79 billion, up 24% from a year ago. Google Cloud revenues were $24.76 billion, up 82% from a year ago.
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How likely is it for Amazon to also raise capex?I believe it’s very likely. First, consider that Amazon is a much larger cloud provider than Alphabet. Amazon Web Services has the greatest global share of the cloud computing market at 28%, followed by Microsoft at 21% and Google Cloud at 14%.
Second, Amazon has been very public and bullish about its capex. In a letter to shareholders in April, CEO Andy Jassy posted a lengthy statement on Amazon’s website justifying the company’s planned spending and saying it would be a “meaningful leader” in AI.
We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch. The recent OpenAI commitment (over $100 billion) is an example of this, but there are several other customer agreements completed (and unannounced), or deep in process. Of the AWS capex we expect to spend in 2026, much of which will be monetized in 2027-2028, we already have customer commitments for a substantial portion of it. And third, there are indications that major hyperscalers are accelerating their AI spending. BNP Paribas analyst Stefan Slowinski recently predicted in an investor report that Microsoft, the No. 2 cloud computing company by market share, would spend a whopping $262 billion on capex in its 2027 fiscal year. (Microsoft reports its fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2026 earnings on July 29, but the company had previously disclosed $104.3 billion in capex spending through its first three quarters.)
What to expect from Amazon’s earningsFirst, I would be shocked if Amazon did not increase its projected capex, but I also expect the market to react poorly because of it. Investors are very focused on the pressure big tech’s capex spending is putting on free cash flow, and I understand why there are concerns that Alphabet, Amazon, and the rest won’t be able to realize a profit from all this spending.
But as Jassy points out, Amazon isn’t spending blindly. As long as Amazon’s spending and planned investment are backed by customer commitments and the demand for more computing power exists, then Amazon looks to be a long-term winner. Any dip in the stock following earnings could be an appealing opportunity to acquire more shares.
Amazon přidává cloudové hraní Luna přímo do aplikace Prime Video prostřednictvím nové záložky Games, aby zvýšil povědomí mezi předplatiteli Prime. V USA a Británii mohou uživatelé s Prime a Fire TV spustit Luna bez příplatku.
by Thomas Wilde on Jul 23, 2026 at 8:46 amJuly 23, 2026 at 8:46 am
Amazon will begin to fold its Luna cloud platform directly into the Prime Video app via the new Games tab, in an effort to get word about Luna to Prime members. (Amazon Luna promotional image) Amazon announced today that it has updated some versions of its Prime Video app to include direct access to its cloud-based Luna gaming platform.
The business goal is to solve Luna’s awareness problem and bring new users to the platform. Many Prime members don’t know the gaming service is included with their membership.
Consumers in the US and UK who have both a Prime subscription and a Fire TV can now launch Luna directly from the Prime Video app, where it can be found in its own dedicated tab in the UI. Prime subscribers who launch Luna in the app will get direct access to a library of both casual and mainstream “AAA” video games for no additional cost and without having to exit the app.
“Effectively, we relaunched last October, taking a bunch of the value of Luna that had been behind a paywall… We pushed it into the Prime membership, as a way of providing great value and trying to grow our business,” Jeff Gattis, GM of gaming at Amazon, told GeekWire.
Players on Luna can stream an assortment of games to their TV or browser via Amazon’s cloud servers, using a smartphone as a controller if they don’t have a compatible gamepad. Luna’s current library ranges from established mainstream hits like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Dispatch, and Fallout 4 to an assortment of casual-friendly exclusive titles like Amazon’s own Courtroom Chaos.
(Amazon Luna press image) Since that relaunch, Gattis said, the company has “basically 5x’d” its player base.
“The question for us is, how do you build upon that?” he said. “How do we let 200 million-plus Prime members worldwide know that they have this great benefit where you can play $70 games inside your Prime membership at no additional cost? One of our biggest challenges today remains that people don’t know the [Luna] benefit exists.”
While Luna was previously available to Prime subscribers via web browser and a couple of other types of smart TVs, it was a standalone service that required users to seek it out on its own. By shifting it into its own tab on the Prime Video app, Amazon’s hope is to drive up awareness that, well, Luna is there at all.
“It’ll start on Fire TV, but obviously our end state is to roll out to more countries and more devices, both first-party and third-party,” Gattis said. “Eventually we’ll be everywhere that Prime Video is.”
Dispatch, a viral indie hit from 2025 about office romance at a superhero agency, has been a big hit on Amazon Luna. (AdHoc Studio image) The integration of Luna with Prime could also potentially bring back the largely-abandoned practice of video game movie tie-ins. Fans of this summer’s Masters of the Universe reboot can watch the film on Prime Video, then switch to Luna to play Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite, a strategic deckbuilding game that’s currently exclusive to Luna. This kind of transmedia synergy used to be a part of every big summer action movie, but it’s largely fallen by the wayside since the 2010s.
Luna originally debuted in 2020 as a subscription-based cloud service. Subscribers could pay a monthly fee for access to over 100 video games, which they could play through their browser by streaming them from Amazon’s servers.
Back then, Luna was Amazon’s entry into what was shaping up to be a publisher-driven “battle for the cloud,” with companies like Google and Nvidia all launching their own game streaming services. Over time, however, the cloud’s impact on gaming hasn’t matched its early hype.
More recently, the component crunch has driven up the price of consoles and graphics cards, and that plays into Amazon’s bet on Luna.
Gattis said the cloud has been “technology ahead of its time,” in part because the industry aimed it at the wrong people, pitching it as a direct replacement for consoles and gaming PCs.
“That’s a heavy lift to ask somebody like myself,” he said. “I’ve invested both emotionally and financially in my Series X console and my 5090 graphics card. I’m happy.”
Amazon is catering to everyone else: players unlikely to buy a gaming PC or a current-generation console, let alone the next generation of gaming hardware at even higher prices. For the first time, Gattis said, there are “a lot more people who are going to think about the cloud as a viable alternative to $1,500 hardware.”
Amazon klesl o 4 % poté, co trh znervóznily obavy kolem výdajů na AI a vyšetřování Senátu kvůli vlivu Číny na marketplace. Investoři vyhlížejí výsledky příští týden.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) stock is down 4% to $234.81 Thursday afternoon, cutting through what had been a relatively steady July trading range for the e-commerce and cloud giant. The move lands inside a broader tech pullback, with the NASDAQ 100 down nearly 2% on the day. Amazon shares now sit well below their 50-day moving average of $251.16.
The drop comes a week ahead of the company’s Q2 2026 earnings release on July 30, sharpening focus on AI infrastructure spending, AWS growth, and any hint of regulatory drag. Today’s slide reflects a confluence of catalysts.
AI Capex Jitters and a Senate Overhang The dominant driver is a sector-wide rotation out of mega-cap AI names after Alphabet‘s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) capex guidance hike this week. Alphabet stock is down 6%, and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) shares are down 4%, as investors question whether AI returns will outpace ballooning infrastructure costs.
Layered on top are two Amazon-specific overhangs. Per a Bloomberg report roughly 17 hours old, the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee is investigating allegations Amazon allowed Chinese influence on its online marketplace. Republican committee staff said they found “compelling evidence” of Amazon “negligence related to Chinese influence,” though the cited committee email “didn’t cite any specific evidence.”
The probe stems from an earlier Bloomberg story about an alleged bribery market involving Amazon employees in China selling favors to merchants. Amazon declined to comment, and these remain allegations under investigation, not established facts. Separately, CNBC reported layoffs in Amazon’s artificial general intelligence (AGI) unit, framed by the company as a strategic realignment toward higher-impact projects.
Peers and Valuation Context The e-commerce peer group is trading softer but not dramatically so. eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) stock is down 3%, and Etsy shares are down 2%, suggesting today’s Amazon move is more tech-and-regulatory driven than a broad consumer discretionary problem.
The valuation picture keeps Amazon roughly in line with its e-commerce peers. Amazon stock trades at a trailing-twelve-month P/E ratio of 28x, sitting between eBay stock at 25x and Etsy stock at 30x. For diversified exposure to Amazon, some traders use the State Street Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE ARCA:XLY), though the fund is top-heavy. Amazon and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) sit as outsized weights, so the ETF doesn’t provide extremely broad diversification.
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Bull Case Still Intact Into Earnings Despite the pullback, Wall Street remains constructive on Amazon stock into next Thursday’s earnings release. Bank of America reiterated a Buy rating on AMZN stock with a $310 price target, citing AI-driven AWS acceleration and expected Q2 revenue of $198.8 billion. The consensus analyst target sits near $313, with a Moderate Buy rating overall.
Amazon’s Q1 2026 setup supports that view. AWS grew 28% to $37.6 billion, the fastest pace in 15 quarters, and advertising crossed $70 billion in trailing revenue. Prediction markets currently price a 95% probability Amazon beats Q2 estimates.
Still, the bearish overlay shouldn’t be overlooked. Amazon’s Q1 2026 capital expenditures hit $44.2 billion, and the company’s TTM free cash flow fell to $1.2 billion, a reminder of how much cash the AI buildout is consuming. Regulatory noise from the Senate probe adds another wild card.
What to Watch Investors can watch for whether Amazon stock holds the 200-day moving average of $234.35 into the close, and whether AWS growth, operating income guidance, and any capex commentary on the July 30 call reset the narrative. Maintaining modest position sizing into the earnings release may be the reasonable path here, given the regulatory tail risk sitting alongside a fundamentally strong quarter.
The key tension is straightforward: a strong fundamental setup (accelerating AWS, expanding advertising, and a Q1 beat) is running headlong into an AI-capex debate that just claimed Alphabet and Meta Platforms as collateral damage. Whether Amazon’s Q2 print reframes the spending narrative or reinforces it will likely dictate direction into August.
The takeaway for investors: today’s AMZN stock pullback looks more like sentiment and headline risk than a fundamental break. Traders comfortable with volatility may find the setup attractive, while longer-term holders should focus on AWS growth, operating margin trajectory, and management’s tone on the roughly $200 billion 2026 capex plan when Amazon reports next week.
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Amazon.com stock is trending lower. What’s pulling AMZN shares down? Earnings Preview & HistoryAmazon is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on July 30. Analysts estimate EPS of $1.82 along with revenue of $196.02 billion. For the prior quarter, Amazon reported EPS of $2.78, beating the consensus estimate of $1.64. The company also posted revenue of $181.52 billion, exceeding the consensus estimate of $177.29 billion.
Over the last four quarters, Amazon has averaged an EPS surprise of 0.30% and a revenue surprise of 0.02%.
What To WatchInvestors will be watching AWS revenue growth and operating margin closely, since that’s the clearest signal of whether enterprise AI demand is actually boosting cloud profitability rather than just driving up capex and depreciation. Advertising revenue growth is another key figure to track, as it can help offset retail margin pressure and keep overall operating income moving in the right direction.
In North America and International retail, the focus shifts to operating income and fulfillment cost trends — if shipping and logistics costs start climbing again, they could quickly eat into any gains from stronger sales.
Analyst Consensus & Recent Actions The stock carries a Buy rating with an average price forecast of $320.10. Recent analyst moves include:
Wells Fargo: Overweight (Raises Target to $322.00) (July 21) Keybanc: Overweight (Raises Target to $335.00) (July 16) Wedbush: Outperform (Target $293.00) (July 16) A Tug-of-War Above the 200-Day AverageFrom a trend perspective, Amazon is in a "tug-of-war" zone: it’s trading 2.1% below the 20-day SMA ($243.61) and 4.8% below the 50-day SMA ($250.60), but it’s still 1.7% above the 200-day SMA ($234.46). That mix often reads as a pullback inside a longer uptrend, with the 200-day acting as the line bulls want to defend.
Momentum is also fairly balanced, with RSI at 47.59 (neutral), suggesting the stock isn’t stretched enough to force either capitulation selling or a snapback rally on momentum alone. In practice, that puts more weight on nearby levels and moving averages—especially whether price can reclaim the 20-day/50-day area on rebounds.
The moving-average structure is mixed: the 20-day SMA is below the 50-day SMA (a bearish near-term crossover), while the 50-day SMA remains above the 200-day SMA after the golden cross in May. Traders will often treat that as "long-term trend intact, short-term trend under pressure," which fits with the recent swing high in May followed by a swing low in June.
Key levels are fairly clean here, with overhead supply near the mid-$240s to around $250 and a more meaningful downside reference well below current price. A break and hold back above the 50-day area would improve the near-term picture, while losing the 200-day would raise the odds that the pullback is turning into something deeper.
Key Resistance: $249.50 — lines up closely with the 50-day SMA area ($250.60), a common spot where rebounds can stall Key Support: $225.00 — a nearby downside level traders may watch as a prior demand zone if the pullback accelerates Benzinga Edge RankingsBelow is the Benzinga Edge scorecard for Amazon, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses compared to the broader market:
The Verdict: Amazon’s Benzinga Edge signal reveals a growth-heavy profile with only moderate momentum, which fits a stock that can trend long-term but still chop around key moving averages in the short run. For traders, that often means waiting for either a reclaim of the $249.50 area or a cleaner dip toward support before pressing directional bets.
Amazon Shares Edge LowerAMZN Price Action: At the time of publication, Amazon shares are trading 3.11% lower at $237.24, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
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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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Jeff Bezos tlačí na redesign Prime Video, aby AI stála v centru služby. Projekt Lighthouse má zlepšit doporučování i hlasové ovládání pro více než 200 milionů uživatelů.
SummaryCompaniesPrime Video to receive an AI-driven redesignJeff Bezos is overseeing Prime Video projectAmazon aims to improve its battered reputation in AISAN FRANCISCO, July 23 (Reuters) - Jeff Bezos has identified a new, high-profile platform to help showcase the hundreds of billions of dollars Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab has bet on artificial intelligence: Prime Video.
The Amazon founder and executive chairman pushed Prime Video head Mike Hopkins to overhaul the streaming service so that AI is front and center, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.
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The resulting project, known internally as Lighthouse, would shine a light on Amazon’s AI capabilities for the more than 200 million consumers who use Prime Video.
Lighthouse is viewed as one critical piece in Amazon’s companywide efforts to elevate the company’s stature in artificial intelligence, as competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic speed ahead, the people said. Other AI initiatives, such as the multiyear overhaul of its Alexa voice assistant to provide more conversational responses, have had mixed results and the unit is still losing money, people familiar with the matter have previously told Reuters.
Amazon declined to comment.
CONTENTIOUS MEETING SPARKED OVERHAULThe Prime Video initiative grew out of an internal presentation the streaming service’s executives made to Bezos last autumn that turned contentious, according to these people.
Bezos was displeased that Hopkins' plans to update Prime Video failed to sufficiently highlight the service’s capabilities in AI and personalization, according to the people. Bezos' response prompted the Prime Video executives to scrap their previous plans and embark on Lighthouse.
The company has committed some $200 billion to capital expenditures this year, related primarily to developing AI, and invested an initial $23 billion in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic combined, with the potential for upwards of another $40 billion.
Lighthouse entails a broad swath of new features that use AI to improve film and TV recommendations, in part by learning consumers' preferences, and responding to spoken requests, according to one person with knowledge of the project who spoke on condition of anonymity. Prime Video is working on redesigning the main home page as part of the project, the other people said.
The final redesign has not yet been settled, but one option Prime Video executives discussed includes AI-driven tiles, with pre-populated viewing suggestions like “action movies from the 1980s” or “Christmas rom-coms,” three of the people said. Another source said a current version does not include text-heavy tiles.
The traditional search function would remain, as well as space at the top of the screen for video highlights promoting new releases or sporting events, such as “Thursday Night Football,” the weekly National Football League game that is exclusive to Amazon.
Amazon is already testing versions of the redesign with a few users, said one of the people. Prime Video's plans, the people said, could change due to feedback from early testers, or financial or other concerns.
Prime Video, like other streaming services, relies on paid placement by studios, as well as software algorithms, to dictate where content is displayed on the home screen, said Michael Goodman, director of entertainment research for Parks Associates. Any change to that, including through greater personalization, could upend that system, he said.
“The real estate on the home screen is very valuable to studios, so it would be a big change to take away any of that coveted space,” said Goodman.
FOUNDER'S PERSONAL INVOLVEMENTBezos has been personally involved in the Prime Video overhaul, the people said, including receiving occasional updates, underscoring the stakes for a company battling a reputation for subpar AI foundation models. Improved personalization can lead to more hours spent on the service.
His involvement with the Prime Video project is unusual as he has taken a step back from most day-to-day operations at Amazon since relinquishing the CEO title in 2021. He also owns the Washington Post and is the founder of spaceflight firm Blue Origin and AI startup Prometheus, reportedly valued at around $41 billion. He has focused more of his attention on those projects.
Prime Video is one of Amazon's best-known brands and is available to consumers in a number of markets where Amazon has limited or no e-commerce presence. Beyond no-cost shipping, Prime Video is the Prime subscription's most-used offering.
As part of the Lighthouse project, Amazon has also discussed integrating the Alexa voice assistant into Prime Video’s search function, the people said. Amazon in early 2025 released an overhauled generative AI version of Alexa, and integrated it into its main shopping site in May 2026.
Kam Keshmiri, global head of the Prime Video design, was also at the meeting with Bezos and is now leading the Lighthouse redesign, the people said.
PRIME VIDEO'S MARKET POSITIONIn the U.S., Prime Video is the fourth most-watched streaming service, but it is prized by Bezos, who frequents high-profile Hollywood events and owns a $165 million home in Beverly Hills.
Amazon became the first streaming service to win an Academy Award in a major category. The company deepened its commitment to entertainment in 2022 when it paid $8.5 billion to buy MGM, giving it access to many well-known entertainment franchises, including James Bond.
Prime Video’s 4.2% share of television viewing in the U.S. trails YouTube with 13.4%, Netflix (NFLX.O), opens new tab at 7.8% and Walt Disney's (DIS.N), opens new tab Disney+ at 5%, according to April data from Nielsen. Still, many Prime Video members spend hours a week consuming content on the platform, and the company wants to further hone its personalization capabilities through AI.
The service released a significant redesign in July 2024, aimed at making it easier for users to distinguish between what content is free and what costs extra, such as subscriptions to Paramount+ and TV shows and movies that require a rental fee.
Amazon wants Prime Video to be users’ central hub for paid subscriptions.
Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco and Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Edmund Lee and Matthew Lewis
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Greg Bensinger joined Reuters as a technology correspondent in 2022 focusing on the world's largest technology companies. He was previously a member of The New York Times editorial board and a technology beat reporter for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for Bloomberg News writing about the auto and telecommunications industries. He studied English literature at The University of Virginia and graduate journalism at Columbia University. Greg lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.
Počet zaměstnanců Amazonu pobírajících potravinovou a zdravotní pomoc se od roku 2020 téměř ztrojnásobil. Firma zároveň plánuje v roce 2026 investovat do AI infrastruktury 200 miliard USD.
A new Government Accountability Office report commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders finds the number of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) workers relying on federal food and health assistance has nearly tripled since 2020, even as the company disclosed plans to spend $200 billion on artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2026.
The GAO reviewed enrollment data from 11 states representing roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population, covering February 2020 through September 2025. In those states, 12,346 Amazon workers were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and 11,338 in Medicaid, figures the report says are nearly triple the counts in the prior GAO study.
Amazon ranked second among traditional employers of public-assistance recipients in the sample, behind Walmart, which had 16,055 workers on Medicaid, a 55% increase from the earlier report, and 15,515 on SNAP. Gig platforms including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub and Instacart collectively surpassed Walmart to become the single largest category of SNAP recipients, a reflection of how contract labor has reshaped the low-wage workforce.
A National Picture Nationally, the GAO estimates 13.8 million working Americans are on Medicaid, up from 12 million in 2020, and 10.6 million on SNAP, up from 9 million. Wage data helps explain the persistence. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports average hourly earnings for the total private sector reached $37.64 in June 2026, but real average hourly earnings have barely moved, sitting at $11.32 in June 2026 compared with $11.18 in June 2024. The BEA’s latest quarterly figures show transfer receipts have grown to $5,099.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026, with Medicaid outlays climbing to $1,060.2 billion.
The Corporate Side of the Ledger Over roughly the same window covered by the GAO study, Amazon’s annual profit grew from $11.59 billion to $77.67 billion. Revenue reached $716.92 billion in fiscal 2025, with operating income of $79.98 billion.
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On the Q4 2025 earnings call on Feb. 5, 2026, CEO Andy Jassy told investors the company would spend about $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, a roughly 60% increase from about $125 billion in 2025, saying the outlays are “predominantly in AWS” to meet AI compute demand. Jassy characterized the spend as demand-driven: “We are monetizing capacity as fast as we can install it.”
The most recent quarter offers evidence the AI bet is landing. AWS generated $37.59 billion in revenue in Q1 2026, up 28% year over year, the segment’s fastest growth in 15 quarters. Capital expenditures in that single quarter hit $44.2 billion, and free cash flow fell sharply as the buildout accelerated. Prediction market participants on Polymarket assign a 0.89 probability that Amazon’s 2026 capex will exceed $200 billion.
What to Watch The two datasets cover overlapping but nonidentical fiscal years, which limits any causal reading between the AI outlays and the growth in workers on public assistance. The GAO report establishes that the workforce dependency trend accelerated during years when Amazon’s earnings, and its capital ambitions, were expanding at their fastest pace in company history. The next signal comes on July 30, 2026, when Amazon reports Q2 results and updates its capex guidance for the balance of the year.
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Amazon přepracoval Alexa+, aby méně spoléhala na modely Anthropic a více na vlastní AI, s cílem výrazně snížit náklady na provoz. Interní odhady počítaly s cloudovými náklady AWS kolem 1,7 miliardy USD v roce 2026.
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An Alexa+ signage during an unveiling event in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025. Bloomberg/Getty Images Amazon has redesigned Alexa to rely less on Anthropic models, part of a sweeping effort to lower the cost of running its AI-powered voice assistant, according to internal documents reviewed by Business Insider.
The documents, which span late last year through early this year, show Amazon pursuing a series of changes in how Alexa generates answers by routing more requests to its in-house AI models, avoiding unnecessary calls to Anthropic's Claude models, and squeezing more work from each GPU.
Together, the initiatives were expected to more than quadruple the number of customer transactions each unit of computing capacity could support.
The effort offers a glimpse into AI's next battleground.
As frontier models become more capable, competition is shifting from building smarter AI to making them cheaper to run. Google has promoted lower-cost AI through Gemini Flash, while companies including OpenAI and Cursor have introduced techniques that automatically send simpler requests to lower-cost models.
Amazon's financial projections underscore why the company has devoted so much effort to this challenge.
Internal forecasts from early this year showed AWS cloud costs for the upgraded, AI-powered Alexa+ were on pace to reach roughly $1.7 billion in 2026, nearly triple the previous year.
Alexa+ was also projected to run about 60% above Amazon's target for AWS cloud cost per monthly active user. Even after identifying roughly $450 million in potential savings, internal reviews concluded the business would not hit its financial targets. Amazon declined to comment.
A costly new AlexaUnlike earlier versions of Alexa, Alexa+ generates many responses with large language models running on GPU-intensive cloud services. That turned relatively inexpensive voice requests into AI workloads that cost far more to serve.
Those costs became more important as Amazon worked through a difficult launch. Business Insider previously reported that the company delayed Alexa+ multiple times as engineers grappled with AI hallucinations and questions about whether the service was ready for customers. Alexa+ expanded its availability in the US earlier this year.
Scaling the service only increased the financial pressure, a sign of how different generative AI is from more traditional software services.
As Alexa+ rolled out to more users, Amazon projected sharply higher AWS cloud spending as demand for AI computing capacity grew.
The company even weighed delaying some of its most expensive AI initiatives. Business Insider previously reported that Project Moonraker, Amazon's effort to give Alexa more advanced AI agent capabilities, was expected to become the service's largest AI expense this year, and the company considered delaying parts of the project as it searched for savings.
Reducing unnecessary calls to Claude
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images One of Amazon's priorities was narrowing where Anthropic's Claude models would be used inside Alexa+.
Internal roadmaps called for moving specialized Alexa "Experts" from Claude Sonnet to Amazon's own AI models while reducing other use of Claude across the digital-assistant service.
Amazon also sought to avoid inference whenever possible. Inference is how AI models are run, and one way to limit the cost of this is to use caching, which stores answers to common requests so the AI doesn't have to do the same work again.
One Amazon roadmap called for Alexa+ to stop calling Claude models when suitable answers were already available in cache, and expand "deterministic" handling, which enables Alexa to answer more predictable requests without tapping a large language model.
The strategy is notable given Amazon's deep ties to Anthropic. Amazon has invested billions in the AI startup, partners closely with it, and stands to reap a significant windfall from Anthropic's IPO, if that goes ahead.
Yet the official internal documents reviewed by Business Insider show Amazon has been looking for ways to reduce how often Alexa relies on Anthropic's models.
Amazon's approach mirrors a growing trend across the AI industry. Investment firm William Blair wrote in a recent report that software companies are starting to reserve frontier models for difficult, high-stakes reasoning while routing less complex requests to cheaper models. That lowers inference costs without changing the customer experience.
"Multi-model routing is becoming standard architecture in software," analysts at William Blair wrote in the report.
Delivering more with fewer GPUsReducing model costs was only one part of the strategy. Amazon also focused on increasing how much work each GPU could perform.
Rather than simply adding more Nvidia GPUs, Amazon wanted to process more customer requests from the same computing gear. One roadmap projected software upgrades would increase available computing capacity by roughly 50% while cutting response times by about 40%. Internal planning dashboards tracked projected customer growth, GPU utilization, available capacity and inference efficiency as Amazon prepared to scale Alexa+.
Amazon's cost-saving efforts extended beyond software. Planning documents show the company evaluating both Nvidia GPUs and its own Trainium chips to further lower the cost of running Alexa+.
More broadly, the documents show Amazon treating frontier AI models and GPU capacity as expensive resources to be deployed selectively rather than by default.
That philosophy echoes a point CEO Andy Jassy has made publicly. In his shareholder letter last year, Jassy argued there's an "urgency" to make AI inference dramatically less expensive.
"Reducing the cost per unit in AI will unleash AI being used as expansively as customers desire, and also lead to more overall AI spending," Jassy wrote.
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Eugene is Business Insider’s Chief Tech Correspondent, where he leads coverage of Amazon. His reporting spans the company’s retail operations, AWS, Alexa, and its secretive internal work culture.Previously, he worked at CNBC, Fortune Magazine Korea, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun. He holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.In 2022, Eugene broke a story uncovering Amazon’s practice of deceptively enrolling customers in Prime and deliberately making cancellation difficult. A year later, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company, citing his reporting. That case culminated in a record $2.5 billion settlement in 2025.His reporting has earned multiple honors, including the SF Press Club’s Bay Area Journalism Award and SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award.Eugene lives in the Bay Area. Contact him via email at [email protected], or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. ExpertiseAmazon, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, e-commerce, and cloud computing.Popular ArticlesAmazon:Internal Amazon emails give an exclusive look at how CEO Andy Jassy has started to run the company, with obsessive attention to the retail business and what some employees feel is micromanagingAndy Jassy will be the next CEO of Amazon. Insiders dish on what it's like to work for Jeff Bezos' successor, who built AWS into a $40 billion business.Internal documents show Amazon has for years knowingly tricked people into signing up for Prime subscriptions. 'We have been deliberately confusing,' former employee says.Inside Amazon's flailing brick-and-mortar ambitions: missed projections, pressure to cut costs, and a war with Whole FoodsInside Amazon's complex employee-review system, where workers feel left in the dark and managers expect to give 5% of reports bad reviewsAfter 28 years, 'Day 2' finally arrives at AmazonAWS, Alexa, healthcare:Inside Amazon's struggle to break into the lucrative market for SaaS business applications, including an internal pitch to buy $38 billion HubSpotInside Amazon's struggle to crack Nvidia's AI-chip dominanceAmazon's AI data center dream runs into the reality of 'zombie' facilities, higher costs, and labor shortagesAmazon is gutting its voice assistant, Alexa. Employees describe a division in crisis and huge losses on 'a wasted opportunity.'Amazon is working on a new 'Remarkable Alexa,' but internal politics and technical issues plague the projectAmazon projected huge losses from its healthcare business in 2024, but strong sales growth, internal document reveals
Amazon Alexa AI More AWS Anthropic Generative AI Exclusive
In the latest trading session, Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) closed at $244.85, marking a -1.09% move from the previous day. The stock trailed the S&P 500, which registered a daily loss of 0.14%. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 0.01%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.57%.
The online retailer's shares have seen an increase of 5.74% over the last month, surpassing the Retail-Wholesale sector's gain of 0.45% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.25%.
The investment community will be closely monitoring the performance of Amazon in its forthcoming earnings report. The company is scheduled to release its earnings on July 30, 2026. In that report, analysts expect Amazon to post earnings of $1.82 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 8.33%. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $196.85 billion, indicating a 17.38% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
In terms of the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates predict earnings of $8.93 per share and a revenue of $826.74 billion, indicating changes of +24.55% and +15.32%, respectively, from the former year.
Investors should also take note of any recent adjustments to analyst estimates for Amazon. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. Hence, positive alterations in estimates signify analyst optimism regarding the business and profitability.
Our research reveals that these estimate alterations are directly linked with the stock price performance in the near future. To utilize this, we have created the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model that integrates these estimate changes and provides a functional rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, which varies between #1 (Strong Buy) and #5 (Strong Sell), carries an impressive track record of exceeding expectations, confirmed by external audits, with stocks at #1 delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.49% higher within the past month. At present, Amazon boasts a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).
In the context of valuation, Amazon is at present trading with a Forward P/E ratio of 27.72. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 17.14, which means Amazon is trading at a premium to the group.
Meanwhile, AMZN's PEG ratio is currently 1.6. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. As of the close of trade yesterday, the Internet - Commerce industry held an average PEG ratio of 1.12.
The Internet - Commerce industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 161, which puts it in the bottom 35% 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.
Don't forget to use Zacks.com to keep track of all these stock-moving metrics, and others, in the upcoming trading sessions.
Amazon Earnings: What Wall Street Will Be WatchingThe brokerage reiterated its Buy rating and $310 price forecast, citing improving AI positioning, accelerating AWS growth and continued momentum in generative AI services as potential catalysts for the stock in the second half of 2026.
Bank of America now expects Amazon to report second-quarter revenue of $198.8 billion and operating income of $24.1 billion, above Wall Street consensus estimates of $196.8 billion and $23.6 billion, respectively.
The firm also raised its AWS revenue growth forecast to 33% year over year, up from its prior estimate of 31%, driven by growing demand from Anthropic, OpenAI-powered Bedrock services and broader enterprise AI adoption.
AWS Growth Remains The Key FocusAnalysts expect Amazon’s third-quarter revenue guidance to range between $200.5 billion and $205.5 billion, roughly bracketing Street expectations.
They noted that an earlier-than-usual Prime Day will likely create a headwind for third-quarter retail comparisons after shifting some sales into the second quarter.
The firm said investors should focus less on headline earnings and more on AWS growth, cloud margins, AI backlog expansion and commentary around capital spending.
Bank of America believes Amazon’s cloud business continues to strengthen relative to competitors, supported by Bedrock adoption, Trainium chips and growing AI workloads.
AI Spending And Anthropic PartnershipThe brokerage also said Amazon could increase its 2026 capital expenditure outlook to about $210 billion because of higher memory costs and additional AI infrastructure investment.
While that could weigh on near-term sentiment, analysts said stronger cloud demand and improving AI monetization should outweigh those concerns over time.
Bank of America added that Amazon’s expanding relationship with Anthropic could further boost results. The firm estimates Anthropic-related workloads alone could contribute more than $1.5 billion in sequential AWS revenue growth during the quarter, while Amazon’s stake in the AI startup could generate a significant mark-to-market gain.
Wall Street Remains Bullish Ahead Of EarningsAmazon is scheduled to report second-quarter results on July 30.
Wall Street expects earnings of $1.82 per share, up from $1.68 a year earlier. Revenue is projected to reach $196.02 billion, compared with $167.70 billion in the prior-year quarter.
The stock trades at about 29.6 times forward earnings. Analysts maintain a Buy consensus rating with an average price forecast of $320.10. Recent analyst actions include:
Wells Fargo reiterated Overweight and raised its price forecast to $322 on July 21. KeyBanc maintained Overweight and increased its price forecast to $335 on July 16. Wedbush reiterated Outperform with a $293 price forecast on July 16. Amazon ETF ExposureAmazon is a major holding in several exchange-traded funds, including:
Large fund flows into or out of these ETFs can influence Amazon’s share price because of its significant portfolio weighting.
Amazon Price ActionAMZN Stock Price Activity: Amazon.com shares were down 1.47% at $243.91 at the time of publication on Wednesday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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Item 1 of 2 The logo of Amazon is pictured at a company logistics center in Carquefou near Nantes, westren France, May 6, 2026. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
[1/2]The logo of Amazon is pictured at a company logistics center in Carquefou near Nantes, westren France, May 6, 2026. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
SAN FRANCISCO, July 22 (Reuters) - Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab on Wednesday cut jobs in its artificial general intelligence group, marking the latest in a series of smaller reductions across the company since a much larger one in January.
Artificial general intelligence is a hypothetical AI system that surpasses human intelligence and can learn, grow and operate autonomously. Many of the top AI companies are working to develop similar systems, with the hope of deploying them to solve difficult problems.
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"We've been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we're working on," said an Amazon spokesman following a Reuters inquiry. "We’re sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts. That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization."
Rohit Prasad, a top Amazon executive overseeing AGI, left the company at the end of last year and the head of its AGI Lab, David Luan, left in February. AGI work was consolidated under senior vice president Peter DeSantis in December as part of a larger group that also includes silicon development and quantum computing.
Employees under Adeeb Shanaa, vice president of artificial general intelligence data services, and Vishal Sharma, vice president of AGI information, reported being impacted by the cuts on online forums on Wednesday. However, the full scope of the cuts could not immediately be learned.
Amazon cut 16,000 jobs across the company in January.
Reporting by Greg Bensinger; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kirsten Donovan
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Greg Bensinger joined Reuters as a technology correspondent in 2022 focusing on the world's largest technology companies. He was previously a member of The New York Times editorial board and a technology beat reporter for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for Bloomberg News writing about the auto and telecommunications industries. He studied English literature at The University of Virginia and graduate journalism at Columbia University. Greg lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.
Amazon uzavřel s italskými odbory první celostátní kolektivní dohodu v zemi, která upravuje dovolenou, pracovní podmínky a video dohled na 57 pracovištích. Zahrnuje i rodičovskou dovolenou po hodinách.
Amazon logo outside an Amazon warehouse in Manchester, Britain, October 28, 2025. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
CompaniesMILAN, July 22 (Reuters) - Italian unions have signed an agreement with Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab covering leave, employee rights and video surveillance, the unions and the U.S. e-commerce giant said on Wednesday.
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The Filt CGIL, Fit CISL and Uiltrasporti unions said 57 sites operating in Italy were covered in the deal struck with Amazon Italia Transport and Amazon Italia Logistica and hailed it as the first such national collective agreement reached with Amazon in any country.
Regarding video surveillance, the unions said it has been agreed that images cannot be used for disciplinary purposes.
Employees have been granted the right to take parental leave in increments as small as a single hour, the unions added.
"We welcome the agreement reached with trade unions, which introduces new flexibility and work-life balance tools and enhances existing ones, bringing them into a shared framework for the benefit of our employees and their families," Amazon said in a statement.
The agreement builds on an initial protocol signed with Amazon in 2021.
Amazon has 19,000 permanent employees in Italy.
Writing by Keith Weir, editing by Alvise Armellini
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