Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 5th, 2026

Acumen Wealth Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) by 18.7% during the 1st quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 43,775 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 6,906 shares during the quarter. Amazon.com comprises 2.5% of Acumen Wealth Advisors LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 9th biggest holding. Acumen Wealth Advisors LLC’s holdings in Amazon.com were worth $9,117,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Gryphon Financial Partners LLC grew its stake in shares of Amazon.com by 7.5% in the 1st quarter. Gryphon Financial Partners LLC now owns 73,085 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $15,221,000 after buying an additional 5,125 shares during the period. Narwhal Capital Management grew its holdings in shares of Amazon.com by 2.3% during the 4th quarter. Narwhal Capital Management now owns 216,606 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $49,997,000 after purchasing an additional 4,854 shares during the period. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership increased its position in shares of Amazon.com by 21.0% during the 4th quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 24,653,228 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $5,690,463,000 after purchasing an additional 4,275,942 shares during the last quarter. Weaver Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in Amazon.com by 13.6% in the 4th quarter. Weaver Capital Management LLC now owns 39,264 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $9,063,000 after buying an additional 4,713 shares during the period. Finally, Ethos Financial Group LLC lifted its position in Amazon.com by 9.6% in 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 buying an additional 3,196 shares during the last quarter. 72.20% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In AMZN has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Jefferies Financial Group reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Amazon.com in a research report on Thursday, June 18th. Scotiabank reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and set a $325.00 price objective (up from $275.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Citigroup reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $350.00 target price (up from $325.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a report on Friday. Canaccord Genuity Group boosted their target price on Amazon.com from $300.00 to $330.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets restated an “outperform” rating and set a $360.00 price target (up from $355.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Fifty-six analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and three have given a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $322.56.

Check Out Our Latest Report on AMZN

Insider Activity at Amazon.com In related news, VP Shelley Reynolds sold 2,363 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, May 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $262.38, for a total value of $620,003.94. Following the transaction, the vice president directly owned 119,780 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $31,427,876.40. This trade represents a 1.93% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible 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 business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, May 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $268.53, for a total transaction 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 trade represents a 18.37% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold 76,867 shares of company stock worth $20,253,702 over the last three months. Company insiders own 8.90% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Amazon.com Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:

Positive Sentiment: AWS growth is strengthening the AI investment case. Second-quarter revenue rose 19.6% to $200.6 billion, while AWS revenue increased 37% and operating income rose sharply. Investors are increasingly confident that Amazon’s infrastructure spending is translating into cloud demand, margins and future revenue visibility. Amazon AWS growth article Positive Sentiment: Analysts remain constructive. Multiple firms have raised price targets, with reported targets generally above the current share price. A large AWS backlog and accelerating AI-related demand are supporting the bullish outlook. Amazon analyst targets and AWS backlog Positive Sentiment: AI monetization is broadening. Amazon’s investment in Anthropic and its OpenAI partnership could increase demand for AWS chips and infrastructure. Personalized recommendations and AI features in Prime Video may also improve engagement and create additional monetization opportunities. Amazon Prime Video AI article Neutral Sentiment: Recent momentum may be vulnerable to profit-taking. Short covering and strong post-earnings buying helped drive the recent rally, but some analysts have downgraded Amazon to more moderate recommendations as valuation and expectations rise. Amazon rating downgrade Negative Sentiment: Bezos’ planned sale is the main near-term overhang. The proposed disposal, valued at roughly $4 billion to $4.7 billion, increases potential supply and has been interpreted as a sentiment “buzzkill” immediately after the stock’s record high. Jeff Bezos Amazon share sale Negative Sentiment: Risks from spending and regulation remain. Amazon faces very large AI capital commitments, negative free cash flow and future data-center lease obligations. New Jersey also sued over alleged delivery-network wage suppression, while a court allowed Perplexity’s AI shopping tools to continue operating on Amazon’s platform, potentially increasing competitive and security concerns. Big Tech AI data-center lease obligations Amazon.com Stock Performance Shares of Amazon.com stock opened at $277.42 on Wednesday. The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $246.29 and a 200-day simple moving average of $236.73. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a current ratio of 1.03. Amazon.com, Inc. has a one year low of $196.00 and a one year high of $287.20. The company has a market cap of $2.99 trillion, a PE ratio of 22.32, a P/E/G ratio of 1.81 and a beta of 1.45.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 30th. The e-commerce giant reported $5.75 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.82 by $3.93. Amazon.com had a net margin of 17.44% and a return on equity of 18.00%. The company had revenue of $200.61 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $197.03 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $1.68 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 19.6% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 8.39 EPS for the current fiscal year.

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.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Amazon.com System Upgrade: First Internet Bancorp Options Surge AI Security Breaches Raise New Risks for Microsoft and Amazon’s Agent Push The AI Chip Blockade Is Creating a Shadow Market Grab Holdings Stock Forms Bottom After Strong Beat-and-Raise Quarter 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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Amazon's (AMZN +1.69%) second-quarter earnings had investors on edge, fixated above all else on the company's capital expenditure (capex) outlook. This figure came in at roughly $220 billion for the full year, a meaningful increase from the previously stated $200 billion. According to management, higher memory costs are driving the surge.

The question hanging over Amazon's financials is whether such heavy spending can still be justified. During the earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made some comments that offer a pointed answer.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Image source: Amazon.com.

How are capex and free cash flow related? Heavy capital spending and free cash flow are linked by a simple accounting equation. Free cash flow equals cash generated from operations minus capital expenditures. When Amazon accelerates investment in data center infrastructure and servers, capex rises and free cash flow compresses.

Image source: Investor Relations.

In the trailing 12 months that ended with the second quarter, Amazon's free cash flow swung to an outflow of $7.6 billion. The swing was driven by a $66.1 billion year-over-year increase in property and equipment purchases, the bulk of which was tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The company's core profitability engine, Amazon Web Services (AWS), saw revenue reach $42.2 billion in the quarter, up 37% year over year. Meanwhile, operating income from AWS jumped 64% to $16.6 billion. The contrast here is hard to overlook.

Even though Amazon's largest source of cash flow is running harder than ever, the simultaneous build-out of AI capacity is so large that free cash flow is turning negative. This inverse relationship is not a sign of operational weakness; rather, it is the arithmetic reality of front-loading a multi-year investment whose returns are expected to arrive only after new facilities and servers are brought online and filled with new customer workloads.

Jassy explains the economics of AI data centers During the earnings call, Jassy spent considerable time explaining why the current surge in infrastructure spending should ultimately pay off. He noted that data centers have useful lives of 30 years or more. Inside each facility, Amazon can cycle through five or six generations of servers. After the first generation, the unit economics improve because the initial capital outlay does not have to be repeated.

In the near term, however, Amazon is building several data centers at the same time -- ahead of the point at which these facilities can generate revenue. The result is elevated capex and pressure on free cash flow until new capacity is monetized and the servers have been utilized for a few years.

Amazon has navigated a similar cycle before, during the first wave of cloud computing. With that said, achieving meaningful profitability took longer, as cloud demand ramped up more gradually than the blistering pace of AI adoption.

Jassy made it clear that even with the revised $220 billion budget, Amazon still does not expect to have enough capacity to satisfy all of its AI demand in 2026. He anticipates the same bottleneck will persist into 2027 as enterprise customers remain early in the process of moving inference workloads into production.

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A $1 trillion opportunity awaits Perhaps the most striking remark of the earnings call came when Jassy updated the long-term ambitions for AWS. Management previously believed Amazon's cloud unit could grow into a business generating a few hundred billion dollars of annual revenue. Management now believes this figure will at least double and that AWS could "very possibly be a trillion-dollar annual revenue business for us in time."

These words matter because it frames the current capital-intensive nature of AI infrastructure not as a speculative bet but as one of necessity for a market of extraordinary scale. It also suggests that AI demand is neither a short-lived spike nor a maturing cycle already approaching saturation.

Instead, Jassy's remark suggests that AI remains in an early phase whose duration is measured in years -- even decades -- rather than quarters. The deliberate phrase "in time" underscores that the trillion-dollar potential of AWS is an ultra-long-horizon thesis rather than a near-term forecast.

This gives patient investors ample opportunity to accumulate Amazon stock while the company continues to invest, grow, and compound. Against this backdrop, Amazon functions less as a momentum trade and more as a blue chip compounder whose competitive position in cloud and AI is being reinforced precisely by the underlying spending that is currently pressuring its cash flow. While the path forward will not be without volatility, the clarity Jassy provided makes a prudent, multi-year accumulation strategy appear well-grounded.

The Retail-Wholesale group has plenty of great stocks, but investors should always be looking for companies that are outperforming their peers. Has Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) been one of those stocks this year? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.

Amazon is one of 187 companies in the Retail-Wholesale group. The Retail-Wholesale group currently sits at #10 within the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank considers 16 different groups, measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the sector to gauge the strength of each group.

The Zacks Rank emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find stocks with improving earnings outlooks. This system has a long record of success, and these stocks tend to be on track to beat the market over the next one to three months. Amazon is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for AMZN's full-year earnings has moved 4.4% higher within the past quarter. This signals that analyst sentiment is improving and the stock's earnings outlook is more positive.

Based on the latest available data, AMZN has gained about 20.2% so far this year. Meanwhile, stocks in the Retail-Wholesale group have gained about 7.8% on average. This means that Amazon is performing better than its sector in terms of year-to-date returns.

Another stock in the Retail-Wholesale sector, BJ's Restaurants (BJRI - Free Report) , has outperformed the sector so far this year. The stock's year-to-date return is 71%.

The consensus estimate for BJ's Restaurants' current year EPS has increased 6.4% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Breaking things down more, Amazon is a member of the Internet - Commerce industry, which includes 35 individual companies and currently sits at #165 in the Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks in this group have gained about 11.7% so far this year, so AMZN is performing better this group in terms of year-to-date returns.

BJ's Restaurants, however, belongs to the Retail - Restaurants industry. Currently, this 36-stock industry is ranked #190. The industry has moved +1.2% so far this year.

Investors interested in the Retail-Wholesale sector may want to keep a close eye on Amazon and BJ's Restaurants as they attempt to continue their solid performance.

A Zoox robotaxi operates on the streets of downtown Austin, Texas, U.S., March 31, 2026. REUTERS/Joel Angel Juarez/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesSAN FRANCISCO, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Amazon's (AMZN.O), opens new tab Zoox will begin paid rides in Las Vegas next week, the company said on Wednesday, days after the U.S. road safety agency allowed commercial deployment ​of its robotaxis that run without human controls.

Zoox, whose electric carriage-style vehicle ‌has two rows of inward-facing seats, has been carrying passengers in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Austin and Miami for free as part of testing.

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Its commercial launch intensifies competition in the U.S. robotaxi ​market, where Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Waymo already operates paid driverless services in multiple cities ​and Tesla has begun rolling out its service, as companies race ⁠to scale autonomous ride-hailing.

Zoox will start charging passengers in Las Vegas from Monday, ​with pricing similar to the "comfort" tier offered by other ride-hailing companies, it said in a statement. The "comfort" ​tier typically offers newer, roomier vehicles at fares about 20%-40% higher than standard ride-hailing services.

It did not disclose when it would start paid rides in other cities.

Zoox was the first autonomous ride-hailing company ​to receive the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) exemption from federal rules requiring human ​controls, marking a milestone for companies developing robotaxis from the ground up, rather than modifying conventional ‌cars.

The ⁠clearance, however, is limited to up to 2,500 vehicles in each of the next two years.

NHTSA said it determined Zoox's vehicle was as safe as an equivalent vehicle meeting federal motor vehicle safety standards, but placed additional reporting requirements for issues such ​as crashes or ​stopping inappropriately on ⁠roads.

Zoox said fares will be based on a base fare plus time and distance model calculated using the best route, with any destination-specific fees, ​such as airport trips, disclosed upfront, and riders will not pay ​more if ⁠the robotaxi takes a longer route than planned.

Robotaxi operators continue to face regulatory scrutiny over safety, particularly their handling of emergency scenes and interactions with other road users.

Zoox ⁠has issued ​several software recalls over the past two years, ​most recently in July after one of its robotaxis struggled to detect heavy smoke at an emergency scene.

Reporting by ​Abhirup Roy in San Francisco and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Nearly a year ago, Zoox opened its robotaxi service to the public in Las Vegas. Now, it is ready to start charging for those rides.

The Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle technology company said that it will start charging for rides in Las Vegas starting August 10, marking the launch of its commercial operations. The company has spent years working towards this moment.

The Silicon Valley startup was founded in 2014 with a plan to develop a custom-built electric vehicle and the self-driving stack that would drive it, as well as an on-demand ride-sharing app. The company was acquired by Amazon in 2020, and later that year unveiled its robotaxi, a cube-like vehicle equipped with a self-driving system, loads of sensors, and a moonroof, but no steering wheel or pedals. Zoox has spent the past six years testing the vehicle and updating the hardware.

Zoox has faced a number of hurdles over its 12 years, spanning funding, technical development, securing the proper permits for testing, and even several recalls. One major obstacle was lifted last week, when federal safety regulators gave Zoox a temporary exemption from certain federal motor vehicle safety standards.

The exemption, issued by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), allows the company to charge customers for rides in its robotaxi. Because Zoox vehicles lack many of the traditional controls required under federal law, it needed an exemption in order to operate.

Zoox received an exemption last year that allowed it to demonstrate its robotaxis, but not charge. The commercial exemption, which lasts two years and allows Zoox to deploy up to 2,500 vehicles, spans eight federal motor vehicle standards, including windshield defrosting and light vehicle braking systems.

The startup also offers robotaxis in other markets, such as San Francisco and Austin, but it will have to offer them for free for now. In California, Zoox still needs two more permits to operate commercially.

Zoox said robotaxi fares will be calculated based on a base fare, plus distance and time traveled from pick-up to drop-off. The company said the final fee will be calculated based on the best route, and be visible before booking. That fare will not change even if the Zoox robotaxi ends up taking a different route.

Destination fees, such as trips to or from the airport, or a high-traffic event at the Sphere or T-Mobile Arena may also be included in the pricing, the company said. Zoox said it is trying to be competitive with the “comfort” pricing levels offered by traditional ride-hail services.

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Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.

You can contact or verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at kkorosec.07 on Signal.

Amazon’s AI spending is settling a debate between the bulls and the bears. Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Matt Garman spent Monday on Bloomberg Technology arguing that AWS’s growth is only getting started. He then went to X and quantified it in a way that undercuts every bear case that AI demand is topping out. “Much of our capacity is already spoken for through 2027 and into 2028, and demand still significantly outstrips supply,” Garman wrote. “We’re going to keep building to keep up with what customers are asking for.”

That single promise reframes the debate over hyperscaler capex. Garman is telling the market that AWS has already booked its next two years of infrastructure, which is why the company is comfortable spending at a historic pace.

The Numbers Behind the Quote Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) reported Q2 2026 AWS revenue of $42.232 billion, up 37% year-over-year, which management flagged as the fastest growth in 18 quarters. AWS Q2 operating margin came in at 39.4%, and capital expenditures reached $54.208 billion in the quarter, a 68.44% year-over-year jump.

CEO Andy Jassy sized the AI stack directly, stating: “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.” Both are growing at triple-digit rates. AWS chief Garman also flagged a large shift from training to inference workloads, the actual usage of models, which tends to produce sticky, recurring compute demand rather than one-off training bursts.

UBS estimates AWS growth will accelerate to 48% next year as Trainium scales with some help from OpenAI. Prediction markets are echoing the bullish buildout thesis: Polymarket traders assign a 96.3% probability that Amazon’s 2026 capex clears $190 billion. Shares have rallied 20.1% in the past five trading sessions.

The Suppliers Locked Into the Buildout If AWS capacity through 2028 is committed, the merchant silicon and interconnect vendors feeding those data centers have equally visible order books.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL) posted Q1 FY2027 revenue of $2.418 billion, up 28% year over year, with data center contributing $1.833 billion, or 76% of the total pie. CEO Matt Murphy told investors, “We are seeing exceptional AI-related bookings, and as a result, we are significantly raising Marvell’s revenue outlook for both fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2028.” Marvell shares climbed 14.33% on August 4 as the AWS quote circulated.

Astera Labs (NASDAQ:ALAB), which sells connectivity silicon for scale-up AI racks, reported Q1 revenue of $308.4 million, up 93.4% year-over-year, and guided Q2 to a range of $355 million to $365 million. The stock is up 92.99% year-to-date.

Credo Technology (NASDAQ:CRDO) closed fiscal 2026 with full-year revenue of $1.34 billion, up 205.7%, and guided Q1 FY27 to a range of $465 million to $475 million. CEO Bill Brennan credited a vertically integrated approach that he said enables customers to accelerate cluster time-to-stability, maximize GPU utilization, and reduce data center power costs.

What to watch: whether Q3 AWS bookings and hyperscaler capex commentary from Marvell, Astera, and Credo confirm Garman’s 2028 visibility. If they do, Amazon’s AI spending starts to look less like a leap of faith and more like a supply chain already being claimed years in advance.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Amazon (AMZN -2.32%) stock returned nothing during the first seven months of 2026. But it has risen by 25% to a fresh record high since July 30, when the company reported its second-quarter operating results.

Amazon had a great quarter across the board, with its e-commerce, cloud computing, and digital advertising businesses producing accelerating revenue growth. But while discussing these results during his conference call with investors, Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy made one particular comment about the company's cloud business that whipped Wall Street into a frenzy.

Here's what he said and why it could spark a sustained rally in Amazon stock.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Image source: Amazon.com.

Amazon Web Services could become a trillion-dollar business Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon's industry-leading cloud computing platform. It offers hundreds of services to help businesses thrive in the digital age, but its expanding portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) tools is the main driver of the recent acceleration in its revenue growth.

AWS operates data centers worldwide that house thousands of chips and components specifically designed to process AI workloads. Many of these chips come from suppliers like Nvidia, but Amazon also designed its own, including Trainium2, which delivers up to 30% better price-performance than the competition. Trainium3, which recently started shipping, improves price performance by another 30% to 40%.

Every AI developer wants the fastest processing speeds at the lowest price, which is why Amazon's chip business now has $25 billion in annualized revenue. But developers also want access to a library of ready-made models from leading labs like Anthropic to accelerate their AI software projects, and AWS Bedrock offers more than 100 of them.

To further speed up development, programmers are leaning on AI coding assistants like Anthropic's Claude Code. But AWS now offers its own alternative, Kiro, which is 50% more cost-effective than the competition, so usage unsurprisingly tripled sequentially during the second quarter.

All of this led to $42.2 billion in AWS revenue during the second quarter, a 37% increase from the same quarter last year. That growth rate accelerated for the fourth consecutive period, highlighting the platform's incredible momentum.

But it could get better because AWS ended the second quarter with a staggering $496 billion order backlog from customers waiting for more data center capacity to come online. That figure grew in the triple-percentage digits year over year, suggesting the platform's revenue growth could accelerate.

In the past, Jassy predicted AWS would eventually generate a few hundred billion dollars in annual revenue. But he now thinks it could bring in $1 trillion per year in the future, implying substantial potential growth.

Should investors buy Amazon stock today? Amazon plans to spend an enormous amount of money on building more data centers during the next few years, including $220 billion in 2026 alone, to convert its enormous order backlog into revenue. The company can't deduct these costs up front because data centers have a useful life of several years so that it will depreciate them over time instead. That means the money it spends this year could affect earnings in 2027, 2028, 2029, and beyond.

That won't be a problem if Amazon generates a return on all of that spending in the form of soaring AWS revenue. But earnings drive stock prices and any missteps could lead to sluggish (or negative) returns for investors.

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Amazon delivered earnings of $12.44 per share during the last four quarters, placing its stock at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of about 22. The Nasdaq-100 has a P/E ratio of 32.7, so Amazon might be undervalued compared to a basket of its big-tech peers.

But there is a caveat. During the first half of 2026, just over $69 billion of Amazon's $120.7 billion in pretax profit came from paper gains on its investment in Anthropic, which is unrelated to the company's operations. Wall Street analysts actually expect Amazon's earnings to decline in 2027 because they don't think Anthropic will continue to increase in value at the same pace.

Therefore, Amazon looks more expensive (though still attractive) on a forward basis, with a P/E of 27.7.

AMZN PE Ratio data by YCharts

With all that said, given AWS's blistering growth and the trillion-dollar opportunity ahead, I think Amazon stock could be a great long-term addition to any portfolio.

It's the Greg Abel era at Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA +0.79%) (NYSE: BRKB). The new CEO is making his mark on the high-profile holding company, reshuffling the stock portfolio and acquiring new companies to add to the company's about 200 subsidiaries. Berkshire just closed on the acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion in a bet on a housing rebound coming up soon.

He also closed out 16 of the portfolio's smallest stock positions, including Amazon (AMZN -2.32%). Berkshire bought Amazon stock in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, when e-commerce became a lifeline for global consumers, and before the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution turned its cloud business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), into a powerhouse in its own right. Former CEO and investing legend Warren Buffett had said, "I was too dumb to realize what was going to happen," but one of the company's investing managers eventually made the purchase.

Image source: Amazon.

Abel sold all of Berkshire's 2.3 million Amazon shares in his first quarter as CEO. It had been only a small fraction of the portfolio, accounting for less than 1% of the total most of the time. Here's why Berkshire might be making the same mistake of underestimating Amazon again.

Capitalizing on the shift to the cloud Amazon has reinvented itself many times while holding onto its "day one" mission of acting like a start-up. It launched AWS in 2006 under the leadership of Andy Jassy, who is now CEO of the whole company. His inside-out knowledge of AWS puts him in a prime position to lead the company forward as AI explodes.

Jassy has maintained over the past few years that the opportunity is enormous and life-changing, and that the shift to the cloud will happen. He has justified Amazon's massive AI spend by explaining how it will only be able to monetize the opportunity if it's prepared for it, but the market has been concerned about whether the results will warrant what seem like excessively high costs.

However, the results are coming in, and they're looking good. Amazon's revenue increased 20% year over year in the second quarter, driven by a 37% increase in AWS sales. That's a significant acceleration from recent quarters. Operating income increased 63%, driving total operating income growth of 44%, and it accounted for more than 60% of the total.

Here's how the quarter looked compared to recent performance.

MetricQ2 2026Q1 2026Q4 2025Q3 2025Q2 2025Amazon sales growth20%17%14%13%13%AWS sales growth 37%

28%24%20%18% Data source: Amazon quarterly reports. Growth is year over year.

The market is finally catching on to Amazon's opportunity The AWS cloud business is being driven by hyper-interest in AI and engagement with its AI development platforms. It offers a vast array of tools and services through Bedrock and owns an AI chip business with a $25 billion run rate. AWS has a $169 billion run rate, which would make it the 24th-largest business by sales in the U.S. if it were a stand-alone business.

The market picked up on Jassy's future predictions, which are confident and compelling. Even at its current rate of build-out, which will require $220 billion in 2026, Amazon still doesn't have enough capacity to meet demand, and Jassy expects this in 2027, too. The company already has "striking" demand into 2028, and Jassy believes AWS alone will eventually become a $1 trillion business, "with very appealing accompanying free cash flow and return on invested capital."

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Amazon stock jumped 26% after the report, and it's still rising as of this writing. It's up 43% from the middle of the first quarter, an average guess for when Abel might have sold it.

A number of Wall Street analysts raised their 12- to 18-month price target on Amazon stock after the report, and the long-term outlook is finally starting to look realistic to investors.

Not too long after Buffett made his comment about missing Amazon, he said, "I've watched Amazon from the start, and I think what Jeff Bezos has done is something close to a miracle. And the problem is, if I think something will be a miracle, I tend not to bet on it." That could be sound investing advice, but anyone betting against another Amazon miracle might be missing out.

Despite retiring as CEO five years ago, founder Jeff Bezos still has a few passion projects at Amazon (AMZN -2.32%), including Prime Video. The streaming video service that bundles with the Prime delivery subscription has been trying to gain global market share in TV viewing through heavy investments in original content, the acquisition of the renowned MGM Studios, and inroads into expensive sports rights.

Now, Bezos has steered the division to utilize more artificial intelligence (AI) to drive user engagement. Here's what it means for the division and how it could impact Amazon stock.

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AI embedded into video streaming This year, Amazon expects to spend $220 billion on capital expenditures, up from its original guidance of $200 billion. Almost all this spending is related to data center investments for AI cloud computing to serve customers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Bezos and the rest of the Prime Video team want to leverage these AI advancements for Amazon's internal use. For example, they want to layer in more personalized recommendations on the Amazon Prime home screen, changing them entirely based on your watch history. It could also lead to AI-generated tiles that people can click to decide what to watch on Prime Video.

All this is being done to drive further engagement on Prime Video for TV households globally. Utilizing these modern AI tools serves the same purpose as sports rights at the end of the day: driving more watch hours. If total watch hours grow, Prime Video becomes more valuable to Amazon, giving the Prime subscription greater pricing power. Amazon's subscription revenues grew 12% year over year last quarter.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon executive chairman. Image source: Amazon.com.

What does this mean for Amazon stock? These personalized recommendations may be even more important for Amazon to drive strong advertising revenue growth. Advertising revenue for Prime Video will grow as more people watch the service, driven by better-personalized advertisements enabled by AI enhancements.

This is one reason Amazon cited for its advertising segment's 26% year-over-year revenue growth last quarter. Indeed, advertisers spent $76 billion on Amazon ad services over the last year -- either on Prime Video or through shopping recommendations -- which is bringing in extremely high-margin revenue to its income statement.

Internally, Amazon can get a good return on investment on its AI infrastructure costs if advertising revenue keeps growing at a good clip. This is one reason the stock has soared to an all-time high after its latest earnings report.

Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI).

The 47% earnings headline has an asterisk… the sector actually carrying the load… and the guy who keeps building things nobody saw coming The second-quarter earnings season has turned into one of the strongest in years.

The S&P 500 is on pace for blended earnings growth of 47.4% for Q2. If that holds, it’ll be the best growth rate the index has posted since Q2 2021.

Just one week ago, that estimate sat at 38.0%. Two weeks before that, it was 23.2%. In other words, this number has nearly doubled in a month.

So, what’s driving it?

Mostly two companies – but not for the reason you’d think.

Real strength? Or the illusion of strength? Alphabet, Inc. (GOOG) and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) both posted eye-popping earnings surprises this quarter. But dig into the numbers, and you’ll find the “surprise” wasn’t really about search ads or Prime subscriptions.

Here’s FactSet on Amazon:

It is important to note that the (GAAP) EPS actual for Amazon.com for Q2 2026 included non-operating, pre-tax other income of $53.4 billion, primarily from investments in Anthropic.

However, as previously stated, the vast majority of analysts providing EPS estimates to FactSet used the (GAAP) actual EPS of $5.75 including the other income as the comparable number to their estimates.

Alphabet’s beat has a nearly identical story. Its own earnings release attributes $99.0 billion of its profit to unrealized and realized gains on equity securities – stakes in companies like Anthropic and SpaceX – which by itself boosted diluted EPS by $6.26. Strip that gain out, and Alphabet’s “beat” mostly disappears.

So, add Amazon’s $53.4 billion and Alphabet’s $99.0 billion together, and you get $152.4 billion in paper gains from the two companies’ investment portfolios – padding this quarter’s headline profit numbers before either company sold an extra ad or shipped an extra package.

But here’s the thing – these two companies are so large, and their paper gains so massive, that they’re not just inflating their own numbers – they’re pulling the entire S&P 500’s headline growth rate up right along with them.

Two stocks, out of 500, are a major driver of the index’s “best since 2021” story. And what happens if you remove Alphabet and Amazon entirely?

The blended earnings growth for the S&P 500 would fall from 47.4% to 28.8%.

That’s still a very good quarter. It’s just not a record-breaking one.

So, let’s dig deeper to see where the gains have been concentrating.

This sector is doing the heavy lifting That gap – between the flashy 47.4% headline and the more grounded 28.8% reality – is exactly why it’s worth looking past the index-level number and asking a sharper question…

Beyond Big Tech, where has the strength been coming from?

Energy.

It’s posting the strongest year-over-year earnings growth of any sector in the index, at 135.3%. And these gains aren’t riding on one or two names.

Four of the sector’s five sub-industries are showing double-digit growth, led by Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing (277%) and Integrated Oil & Gas (172%).

But is now still a good time to be in oil? Aren’t prices in danger of crashing given the growing chatter around a new potential ceasefire deal with Iran?

On that note, this morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. and Iran could reach a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz today or tomorrow.

While the oil markets would certainly breathe a sigh of relief if that happens, it might matter less than many investors realize. You see, the real bottleneck right now isn’t crude – it’s refining.

Where the money is likely to keep flowing within the oil patch Between disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, and China’s export ban, roughly 10% of global refining capacity is effectively offline. This is keeping fuel prices and refining margins elevated even as crude wobbles.

Here’s Bloomberg from last Friday, quoting ExxonMobil’s CFO:

“The constraint pain point in the energy system is refining,” ExxonMobil Chief Financial Officer Neil Hansen said in an interview.

It’s “something that perhaps the market isn’t fully focused on.”

Translation: even a ceasefire that cools crude prices may not bring fuel prices – or the refiners’ margins tied to them – down with it. Or at least not as fast as the market expects. So, this trade could have more life in it than the “oil is falling” headlines would have you believe.

This is part of why legendary investor Louis Navellier has put his Growth Investor subscribers into refiners.

From Louis’ latest issue:

Global oil refining margins recently breached another record high, as global refining capacity remains pinched due in part to restrictions on Russian diesel, limited shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and Ukraine’s relentless attacks on Russian refineries.

As a result, many American refineries need to meet the ongoing demand for refined petroleum products like gasoline and jet fuel.

One refiner that both Louis and trading veteran Jonathan Rose of Masters in Trading: Live like is HF Sinclair Corporation (DINO).

While Jonathan has played DINO due to the crack spread, Louis has been attracted by the earnings strength.

On that note, the company’s refining segment alone earned $877 million, up from $166 million in the second quarter of 2025. HF Sinclair’s refinery gross margin also surged to $25.95 per produced barrel sold, representing a 57% year-over-year increase.

Louis recommended DINO at the end of June, and the official position is already up more than 30%. As I write, it trades under Louis’ “Buy Below” price of $100.

Another name that shows what “real” earnings growth looks like DINO isn’t the only place Louis is finding real earnings strength – the kind that’s backed by an actual, growing business, not unrealized gains on an investment.

Across his Growth Investor Buy List, Louis has been watching the same pattern repeat all season. Here’s Louis:

Our Growth Investor stocks are characterized by 53.7% average annual sales growth and 112.4% average annual earnings growth.

Our stocks are also on track to post wave after wave of positive earnings surprises, as the analyst community has revised earnings estimates 16.8% higher in the past three months.

So far this earnings season, we’ve had 21 companies report results, and 18 have exceeded analysts’ earnings estimates. Our stocks have posted an average 31% earnings surprise.

Eighteen of 21. That’s a beat rate right in line with the record pace the broader market is putting up – except these beats are showing up in companies actually building the AI boom, not just holding stakes in it.

Take Celestica, Inc. (CLS), another one of Louis’ Growth Investor holdings.

It manufactures the servers, networking gear, and data center hardware that hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google need to actually run their AI workloads – the physical plumbing behind the AI boom, not the AI itself.

Louis just noted that last week, Celestica reported second-quarter revenue of $4.70 billion, up 62% year-over-year, with adjusted earnings per share of $2.54, up 83% from a year ago. Management also raised full-year guidance to $20.5 billion in revenue and $11.30 in adjusted earnings per share.

Once again, Celestica’s earnings weren’t goosed by an equity stake in a venture capital company. They came from the company selling more hardware, at better margins, because demand for AI infrastructure keeps outrunning supply.

Louis’ Growth Investor subscribers are up 84% in CLS as I write. But here again, you have room to get in. Louis’ “Buy Below” price is $409.

For all of Louis’ picks in Growth Investor, click here to learn about joining him.

Now, I just mentioned “an equity stake in a venture capital company” like it’s a bad thing. Of course, it’s not if you’re the one who owns the stake, and not if you got in early with the right person.

Which brings us to our next story…

The guy who keeps building things nobody saw coming – twice Palmer Luckey built his first virtual reality headset out of spare parts and duct tape in his parents’ trailer, while homeschooled and still a teenager in Long Beach, California.

By 21, he’d sold that company, Oculus VR, to Facebook (now Meta Platforms (META)) for $2 billion.

Most people would call it a day and end up on a white sandy beach somewhere.

Instead, within a year of leaving Facebook, Luckey founded a defense company technology startup called Anduril, building autonomous drones and AI-piloted weapons systems for the Pentagon.

Today, private backers value Anduril at somewhere north of $60 billion.

One breakout company, built by a kid tinkering in a trailer, might be a matter of luck. Two breakout companies, in two completely unrelated industries, is skill.

But Luckey isn’t done…

He’s now working on a small nuclear energy startup called Valar Atomics. It builds compact reactors designed to sit directly behind data centers and supply them with power around the clock, a real bottleneck as AI’s electricity appetite outruns the grid.

In March, private investors valued Valar at $2 billion. As of two weeks ago, it’s already back in the market, talking to Sequoia about a new round – at a $6 billion valuation.

That’s a triple in about four months.

With this track record, would you be willing to bet on Luckey’s next company? Of course. And it points toward a truth that every venture investor will tell you…

A great founder with a decent idea beats a great idea saddled with a mediocre founder, almost every time.

Why?

Simple – ideas get copied. Markets shift overnight. Competitors show up from nowhere. The one variable that adapts to all of that in real time is the person running the company.

That’s exactly why the first letter in Luke Lango’s PPT framework – People, Product, Timing – isn’t an afterthought. It’s the filter he runs before he looks at anything else.

Here’s Luke:

Getting through the door is not the same as making money.

The fact that a company is raising money does not make it a good investment. It makes it an opportunity to evaluate…

PPT starts with: Are the founders the kind of people who figure things out when everything goes wrong?

This question is exactly why a name like Luckey moves the needle before a single dollar of revenue shows up on a spreadsheet.

It’s also exactly the kind of filter that matters more in AI than almost anywhere else right now, given how many companies are raising money simply because they can, not because they should.

Luke dove deeper into this question and his broader PPT framework in last Thursday’s 2026 AI Megadeal Event. He walked through how he applies People, Product, and Timing to the private AI opportunities he’s tracking today – including one opportunity he believes could be a portfolio-maker.

As I covered in yesterday’s Digest, Luke gave it away during last week’s presentation. It’s a robotics startup offering a one-of-a-kind “robot school” platform that Luke considers the “ChatGPT moment” for artificially intelligent robots.

You can still watch the free replay right here, while it’s up.

As for Luckey, he’s not done with Valar Atomics either. He’s also founded Erebor Bank, a national digital bank tailored specifically for deep tech, defense, crypto, and hard science startups.

Keep your eye out for opportunities with people like Luckey. History shows that builders who win once rarely stop at once – and if you’re able to hitch yourself to them, the upside can be life-changing.

We’ll keep you updated on all these stories here in the Digest.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

Amazon (AMZN -2.32%) has world-class cloud computing and online retail businesses, but its investment in Anthropic is fast becoming one of its greatest assets. Amazon has invested $13 billion in the artificial intelligence start-up, but in its most recent regulatory filing, Amazon now values that investment at a whopping $190.4 billion.

That’s a 14.6x gain in Amazon’s stake, and it helped Amazon record $62.64 billion in net income for the second quarter, as Amazon was able to claim paper profits of $53.39 billion in non-operating income on its balance sheet.

But the bigger story isn’t about Amazon’s accounting ledger. It's what the revaluation of Amazon’s investment says about Anthropic’s fast-growing value, and what that could mean for Amazon stock down the road.

Image source: Amazon.

Amazon’s current stake in AnthropicFirst, let’s look at the raw numbers. Amazon made an $8 billion investment in Anthropic in 2024, and followed that up this year with another $5 billion investment. Amazon reportedly has a 21% stake in the maker of Claude.

At the end of the first quarter, Amazon disclosed that its Anthropic stake had grown to $74.2 billion -- $42.2 billion in convertible notes and $32 billion in nonvoting preferred stock. Based on Amazon’s reported 21% ownership, that implies Anthropic’s value at the time was about $353 billion.

However, Anthropic is growing fast. In late May, Anthropic raised $65 billion in a fundraising round, valuing the company at $965 billion. It has also filed a confidential draft S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission -- the first step to filing an IPO. So, when Anthropic does go public, it could raise its value even higher.

Now let’s turn back to Amazon. Its second-quarter filing shows that Amazon’s stake in Anthropic grew dramatically: convertible notes are now valued at $97.9 billion, and nonvoting preferred stock is valued at $92.5 billion, giving Amazon a total stake of $190.4 billion.

Clearly, Anthropic is becoming much more valuable, particularly as strong demand for its Claude AI is driving rapid revenue growth. Its list of AI enterprise customers includes Cognizant Technology Solutions, which rolled out the Claude model to its 350,000 employees, as well as IBM and Deloitte.

Anthropic is growing so quickly that it now has a $1.2 trillion valuation on secondary markets. If that’s the case, then Amazon’s stake could be worth up to $252 billion.

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Why the Anthropic value mattersAfter a 20% jump following its earnings report, Amazon currently has a market capitalization of about $3 trillion. And make no mistake -- its businesses are doing exceptionally well. Revenue in the second quarter topped $200.6 billion, with its North America segment growing 16% to $116.2 billion and its International segment jumping 15% to $42.2 billion.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue soared by 37%, generating operating income of $16.6 billion, and Amazon increased its projected capex for the year from $200 billion to $220 billion as it continues to build out its industry-leading cloud computing division.

Anthropic will also be a key customer for Amazon, which obtained more than $100 billion in commitments from the AI start-up over the next decade. Amazon will provide up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for Anthropic to train and run Claude, and will provide an updated version of its Trainium AI chips and CPUs.

Regardless of when -- or if -- Anthropic finally goes public, Amazon will continue to benefit. The value of its equity stake should appreciate, and Anthropic will be a valued Amazon customer.

That’s tremendous value for Amazon’s $13 billion investment -- and in all likelihood, it will just continue to grow.

The state attorney general said in an antitrust lawsuit filed on Tuesday that the company was abusing its market power to keep its delivery costs low.

A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday overturned a ruling that had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its AI-powered agentic shopping tools on Amazon's platform.

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) reported Q2 2026 results that exposed their divergent AI strategies. Tesla poured cash into robotaxis, Optimus, and training compute while operating margins collapsed. Amazon leaned on AWS, advertising, and retail to fund its AI buildout without denting the operating model.

AWS Booms. Tesla’s Margins Break. Tesla posted revenue of $28.24 billion, up 25.52% YoY and beating consensus by 7.10%. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.33 missed expectations of $0.5367, operating margin fell to 1.4%, and free cash flow flipped to -$1.09 billion as capex jumped 141.81%. Deliveries hit a record 480,126 units, Services and Other grew 50%, and active FSD subscriptions climbed to 1.48 million.

Amazon printed revenue of $200.606 billion with operating income of $27.461 billion, up 43.24% YoY. AWS delivered $42.232 billion with a 39.4% operating margin.

CEO Andy Jassy told investors, “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.” The reported $5.75 EPS was flattered by a $53.40 billion non-operating gain tied to Anthropic.

One Bets the Company. One Diversifies the Bet. Tesla funds autonomy and humanoid robotics from a single hardware P&L. Optimus lines are being installed at Fremont, Cybercab production began at Gigafactory Texas, and robotaxi service runs in seven U.S. metros. AI training compute in Texas more than doubled during H1 2026. That burden falls on quarterly operating income of only $398 million.

Business Driver Tesla Amazon Core growth engine Deliveries, FSD, Services AWS, Advertising AI monetization today Pre-scale AI + Chips at $25B+ run rates each Operating margin 1.4% AWS 39.4% Amazon spreads the load. Online Stores hit $70.432 billion, Third-Party Seller Services reached $46.780 billion, and Advertising grew 26% to $19.809 billion.

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Graviton5 arrived with up to 25% better compute performance than Graviton4, Bedrock added 10+ foundation models, and Zoox received NHTSA approval for commercial paid robotaxi service. Capex reached $54.208 billion in a single quarter, pushing trailing free cash flow to -$7.6 billion.

Lens Tesla Amazon Core AI bet Robotaxi, Optimus, FSD AWS, Trainium, Bedrock Funding source Auto hardware Retail, ads, cloud P/E Ratio 286 22 The Next Test Is Whether Tesla’s Cash Burn Pays Off Amazon guided Q3 revenue to $197 billion to $202 billion and operating income to $22.5 billion to $26.5 billion, up meaningfully from $17.4 billion a year ago. Tesla offered no numeric guide.

Polymarket traders give Optimus a release by year-end just a 14.5% probability, a sober tell on the robotics timeline. TSLA is down 18.14% over the past month, while AMZN ripped 22.75% higher in the past week on the earnings report.

Why I Lean Toward Amazon at These Prices I want the AI story where the meter is already running. Amazon at a P/E near 22, with 37% AWS growth and two AI businesses at $25 billion run rates, looks more defensible than Tesla at a P/E near 286 and a 1.4% operating margin.

If Optimus and robotaxi scale meaningfully in 2027, Tesla offers asymmetric upside. Tesla’s setup looks more compelling once free cash flow turns positive. Amazon looks like the more reasonably priced exposure to the AI infrastructure trade at current levels.

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The lawsuit alleges Amazon violated federal and state antitrust laws through its Delivery Service Partner program, arguing the company exercises unlawful “monopsony,” or a dominant buyer's ability to dictate prices and terms-over the small businesses that deliver Amazon packages and the drivers they employ.

Cura Wealth Advisors LLC reduced its position in shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) by 47.5% during the 1st quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 6,670 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock after selling 6,028 shares during the period. Amazon.com accounts for about 0.6% of Cura Wealth Advisors LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 24th largest position. Cura Wealth Advisors LLC’s holdings in Amazon.com were worth $1,389,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in Amazon.com by 1.1% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 832,274,556 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $158,348,557,000 after acquiring an additional 8,913,959 shares during the period. State Street Corp lifted its stake in shares of Amazon.com by 1.8% during the 4th quarter. State Street Corp now owns 388,653,121 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $89,708,913,000 after purchasing an additional 6,971,680 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Amazon.com by 1.1% during the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 225,120,994 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $51,753,622,000 after purchasing an additional 2,479,324 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in shares of Amazon.com during the fourth quarter worth $32,868,735,000. Finally, Auto Owners Insurance Co boosted its holdings in shares of Amazon.com by 27,376.7% during the fourth quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 98,448,885 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $2,272,397,000 after purchasing an additional 98,090,585 shares during the last quarter. 72.20% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets Several equities analysts recently commented on the company. Barclays reiterated an “overweight” rating and issued a $365.00 target price (up from $330.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Friday. Benchmark lifted their price target on Amazon.com from $370.00 to $400.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday. Susquehanna reaffirmed a “positive” rating and set a $325.00 price objective (up from $300.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Bank of America increased their price objective on shares of Amazon.com from $310.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday. Finally, Rosenblatt Securities raised their target price on shares of Amazon.com from $332.00 to $345.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday. Fifty-six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and three have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Amazon.com currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $322.56.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on AMZN

Insider Buying and Selling at Amazon.com In other Amazon.com news, CEO Andrew R. Jassy sold 20,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $263.42, for a total value of $5,268,400.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,205,766 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $581,042,879.72. This represents a 0.90% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at 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 firm’s stock in a transaction dated 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 sale, the senior vice president owned 41,190 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $11,060,750.70. This represents a 18.37% 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. In the last quarter, insiders sold 76,867 shares of company stock valued at $20,253,702. 8.90% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Amazon.com Stock Performance Shares of NASDAQ:AMZN opened at $284.02 on Tuesday. The company has a market cap of $3.06 trillion, a P/E ratio of 22.85, a PEG ratio of 2.01 and a beta of 1.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a current ratio of 1.03. Amazon.com, Inc. has a one year low of $196.00 and a one year high of $287.20. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $246.05 and its 200 day simple moving average is $236.44.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 30th. The e-commerce giant reported $5.75 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.82 by $3.93. Amazon.com had a return on equity of 18.00% and a net margin of 17.44%.The firm had revenue of $200.61 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $197.03 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $1.68 EPS. Amazon.com’s quarterly revenue was up 19.6% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 7.84 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Trending Headlines about Amazon.com Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:

Positive Sentiment: AWS growth and AI demand drove the rally. AWS reportedly posted its fastest growth in 18 quarters, while CEO Matt Garman said demand still significantly exceeds available capacity and is extending into 2028. Analysts also highlighted a reported $496 billion AWS backlog and the potential for AWS to become a $1 trillion revenue business. Amazon Stock Rises as AWS Sees a Major Shift in AI Demand Positive Sentiment: Amazon surpassed the $3 trillion market-capitalization milestone. Shares reached a record high as investors became more confident that cloud growth and improving returns on AI infrastructure can justify the company’s large capital-investment program. The milestone strengthened positive sentiment across major AI and cloud stocks. Amazon Enters $3 Trillion Club as AI Optimism Sweeps Through Wall Street Positive Sentiment: Wall Street raised its valuation expectations. Multiple analysts increased AMZN price targets after the earnings beat, with bullish commentary emphasizing AWS margins, long-term AI infrastructure demand and growth beyond e-commerce. The broader market rally, falling crude oil prices and lower Treasury yields also supported growth stocks. JPMorgan Raises Amazon Stock Price Target After Earnings Neutral Sentiment: AWS announced a multiyear collaboration with Superblocks to offer secure enterprise AI application development through Amazon Bedrock. The agreement supports AWS’s competitive positioning, but its near-term financial impact was not disclosed. Superblocks and AWS Announce Strategic Collaboration Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned about the cost of the AI expansion. Amazon raised projected 2026 capital spending by roughly $20 billion, with total AI and data-center investment discussed at more than $220 billion. Debt has also increased, raising questions about financing, free cash flow and the timing of returns. Amazon Raised 2026 CapEx by $20 Billion Negative Sentiment: Amazon faces consumer lawsuits concerning alleged toxic heavy metals in protein powder and seafood sustainability claims. These matters appear unlikely to drive the current move, but they add potential legal, reputational and compliance risk. Amazon Sued Over Protein Powder Allegations 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.

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Amazon.com SpaceX’s First Earnings Report Could Decide Whether Shorts or Bulls Have Control Why Rare Earth Processing Could Be the Real 2027 Opportunity The S&P 493 Are Staging a Comeback—This Value ETF Offers Broad Exposure TSMC Insiders Are Buying the Pullback—But Is the Signal as Bullish as It Looks? 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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Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 4th, 2026

Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft FI lifted its position in shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN – Free Report) by 6.7% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 390,113 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 24,635 shares during the quarter. Amazon.com makes up about 1.7% of Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft FI’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 18th largest position. Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft FI’s holdings in Amazon.com were worth $81,249,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other large investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. MilWealth Group LLC boosted its stake in shares of Amazon.com by 79.0% in the 4th quarter. MilWealth Group LLC now owns 179 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $41,000 after purchasing an additional 79 shares during the last quarter. Lifetime Wealth Management P.C. acquired a new position in Amazon.com in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $45,000. Elkhorn Partners Limited Partnership lifted its holdings in Amazon.com by 900.0% in the fourth quarter. Elkhorn Partners Limited Partnership now owns 200 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $46,000 after buying an additional 180 shares during the period. Fairway Wealth LLC boosted its stake in Amazon.com by 95.6% in the fourth quarter. Fairway Wealth LLC now owns 221 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $51,000 after acquiring an additional 108 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Prudent Man Investment Management Inc. boosted its stake in Amazon.com by 87.7% in the fourth quarter. Prudent Man Investment Management Inc. now owns 229 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock valued at $53,000 after acquiring an additional 107 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 72.20% of the company’s stock.

Amazon.com Stock Up 4.6% NASDAQ:AMZN opened at $284.02 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a current ratio of 1.03. The company has a market cap of $3.06 trillion, a PE ratio of 22.85, a PEG ratio of 2.01 and a beta of 1.45. Amazon.com, Inc. has a 52-week low of $196.00 and a 52-week high of $287.20. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $246.05 and a 200 day simple moving average of $236.44.

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 business had revenue of $200.61 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $197.03 billion. Amazon.com had a return on equity of 18.00% and a net margin of 17.44%.Amazon.com’s revenue for the quarter was up 19.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $1.68 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 7.84 EPS for the current fiscal year.

More Amazon.com News Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:

Positive Sentiment: AWS growth and AI demand drove the rally. AWS reportedly posted its fastest growth in 18 quarters, while CEO Matt Garman said demand still significantly exceeds available capacity and is extending into 2028. Analysts also highlighted a reported $496 billion AWS backlog and the potential for AWS to become a $1 trillion revenue business. Amazon Stock Rises as AWS Sees a Major Shift in AI Demand Positive Sentiment: Amazon surpassed the $3 trillion market-capitalization milestone. Shares reached a record high as investors became more confident that cloud growth and improving returns on AI infrastructure can justify the company’s large capital-investment program. The milestone strengthened positive sentiment across major AI and cloud stocks. Amazon Enters $3 Trillion Club as AI Optimism Sweeps Through Wall Street Positive Sentiment: Wall Street raised its valuation expectations. Multiple analysts increased AMZN price targets after the earnings beat, with bullish commentary emphasizing AWS margins, long-term AI infrastructure demand and growth beyond e-commerce. The broader market rally, falling crude oil prices and lower Treasury yields also supported growth stocks. JPMorgan Raises Amazon Stock Price Target After Earnings Neutral Sentiment: AWS announced a multiyear collaboration with Superblocks to offer secure enterprise AI application development through Amazon Bedrock. The agreement supports AWS’s competitive positioning, but its near-term financial impact was not disclosed. Superblocks and AWS Announce Strategic Collaboration Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned about the cost of the AI expansion. Amazon raised projected 2026 capital spending by roughly $20 billion, with total AI and data-center investment discussed at more than $220 billion. Debt has also increased, raising questions about financing, free cash flow and the timing of returns. Amazon Raised 2026 CapEx by $20 Billion Negative Sentiment: Amazon faces consumer lawsuits concerning alleged toxic heavy metals in protein powder and seafood sustainability claims. These matters appear unlikely to drive the current move, but they add potential legal, reputational and compliance risk. Amazon Sued Over Protein Powder Allegations Insiders Place Their Bets In related news, CEO Matthew S. Garman sold 15,467 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $263.40, for a total transaction of $4,074,007.80. Following the sale, the chief executive officer owned 14,159 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,729,480.60. This represents a 52.21% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, SVP David Zapolsky sold 9,270 shares of the 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 directly owned 41,190 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $11,060,750.70. This trade represents a 18.37% 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 76,867 shares of company stock valued at $20,253,702 in the last quarter. 8.90% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets Several analysts have commented on the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their target price on shares of Amazon.com from $330.00 to $365.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Friday. The Goldman Sachs Group restated a “buy” rating and issued a $375.00 price target (up from $335.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research report on Friday. Telsey Advisory Group set a $335.00 price objective on Amazon.com and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday. UBS Group set a $318.00 price objective on Amazon.com and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday. Finally, Mizuho set a $330.00 target price on Amazon.com and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday. Fifty-six investment 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 price target of $322.56.

Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on AMZN

About Amazon.com (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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With revenue growth of nearly 37% and a year-over-year improvement in operating income of more than 63%, there's no denying Amazon's (AMZN +4.58%) cloud computing arm experienced a fantastic second quarter. Shareholders have every reason to be happy.

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (GOOGL +4.88%) investors, however, have even more reason to celebrate. The company's Google Cloud business grew its top line by nearly 82%, resulting in operating income growth of over 200%.

There's an important footnote to these percentage-based comparisons: Google's cloud computing business started from a markedly smaller baseline, making it easier for Alphabet to produce a relatively bigger leap. There's another footnote to add to the numbers, though: Google Cloud is gaining market share, while Amazon is losing it.

Image source: Getty Images.

Moving in different directions The chart tells the tale. Data collected by Synergy Research Group indicates Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported 28% of Q2's worldwide total public cloud revenue, extending a downtrend that's been in place since 2022; Microsoft's share peaked in early 2024 and stands at 20%, knocking on the door of new multiyear lows. Google Cloud, conversely, continues to inflate its share of the global cloud business, reaching a new record of 15% last quarter.

Data source: Synergy Research Group. Chart by author.

Then there's the information that's not evident in the chart. That is, on a whole-dollar basis, Google Cloud revenue grew by more than $11.1 billion, almost matching -- on a dollar-for-dollar basis -- Amazon Web Services' net growth of almost $11.4 billion. That may be even more telling than the opposing shifts in market share.

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The little things aren't so little It's not necessarily the end of the world for Amazon. There's certainly been enough AI-driven demand for cloud-based access to computing platforms to go around for both companies, after all, as well as for Microsoft.

From an investor's standpoint, though, it's difficult to deny that Google Cloud clearly offers something that cloud customers increasingly want.

What that is could be a variety of things. Familiarity is one of them; Google offers a range of business-facing services like email, office productivity software, and more. It may also be performance, particularly for artificial intelligence compute customers. Although Amazon's homegrown Trainium and Graviton processor chips are powerful enough to support AI outfit Anthropic's platform, Anthropic is also utilizing Google's Tensor Processing Units, as are Apple and OpenAI.

And Google provides a fully managed, AI-ready platform called BigQuery that makes it incredibly easy for any organization to do something constructive with their digital data. AWS offers similar tools, but BigQuery is widely regarded as the easiest and most cost-effective tool of its kind to use.

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Built better for the future So what? Right now, none of these nuances matters much. As noted, amid massive capital investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure, there's plenty of business to go around.

The AI spending frenzy won't last forever, though. Once it finally cools and cloud computing service providers start fighting for fewer dollars -- or at least less growth -- the seemingly little things become a big deal. From a marketability standpoint, Google Cloud already seems to have an edge on both of its bigger competitors.

Item 1 of 2 A truck departs Amazon's fulfillment center during Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., December 1, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

[1/2]A truck departs Amazon's fulfillment center during Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., December 1, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesAug 4 (Reuters) - New Jersey ‌sued Amazon.com on Tuesday, accusing the online retailer of abusing its market power over independent delivery drivers.

The ​state accused Amazon of using its dominance to ​impose low pay and poor conditions on ⁠drivers who deliver for the company via its ​Delivery Service Partner program. The lawsuit was filed in federal court ​in Newark, New Jersey.

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The program is run by Amazon's logistics arm and allows people to set up businesses ​to deliver packages locally. Those small businesses ​deliver 20 million packages a day for Amazon globally, according ‌to ⁠the company.

The state alleges that Amazon punishes drivers who try to unionize and tries to keep independent businesses in the program from poaching ​each other's drivers ​in ⁠violation of antitrust law.

A spokesperson for Amazon did not immediately respond to ​a request for comment.

Amazon is fighting ​other antitrust ⁠lawsuits brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the state of California accusing the company ⁠of ​illegally monopolizing online retail ​markets. The company has denied those allegations.

Reporting by Jody Godoy in ​New York Editing by Nick Zieminski and Deepa Babington

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Jody Godoy reports on tech policy and antitrust enforcement, including how regulators are responding to the rise of AI. Reach her at [email protected]

Cathie Wood tends to buy when some of her favorite stocks pull back. On Monday -- with the market having its strongest first day of the month since late 2022 -- she was particularly busy, too. The co-founder and CEO of Ark Invest didn't let upticks get in the way of adding to some of her existing positions.

She was a buyer of CoreWeave (CRWV +5.85%), Amazon (AMZN -2.52%), and Rocket Lab (RKLB +5.79%), even as the shares rose 19%, 5%, and 8%, respectively, on Monday. Amazon did hit a new high during the day, but the same can't be said about the bookends. CoreWeave and Rocket Lab are trading 44% and 53% below their 52-week highs, respectively. Let's take a closer look at the three potentially opportunistic purchases by Ark in August.

Ark Investment Management CEO Cathie Wood. Image source: Getty Images.

1. CoreWeave CoreWeave stock rallied alongside other hyperscalers, but it would still have to more than double from here to revisit the all-time high it hit 14 months ago. The company, launched by a few hedge fund friends who initially bought a few GPUs to mine crypto -- before pivoting to the AI opportunity when the digital currency market sold off -- has been one of the market's more volatile investments since going public at $40 early last year.

Revenue rose 112% in its latest quarter, reported back in May. The top-line jump was better than expected, but the report wasn't well-received. A larger-than-projected loss disappointed investors, but it shouldn't have come as a surprise. CoreWeave had fallen short on the bottom line in two of the three previous reports. This is a top-line growth story, with revenue more than doubling in each quarter as a public company. It needs to invest in building out its empire at this stage, which introduces red ink on the other end of its red-hot revenue growth.

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CoreWeave was making positive waves even after the market closed on Monday. Analyst James Fish at Piper Sandler initiated coverage of the stock with a bullish overweight rating, praising CoreWeave's engineering team for its ability to achieve cost reductions as it continues to grow to meet the booming demand for AI infrastructure. His $151 price target offers 76% near-term upside even after Monday's jump.

CoreWeave also announced on Tuesday morning that it was expanding into Indonesia, marking its first push to establish a data center presence in the Asia-Pacific region. It will build out three facilities offering a total of 360 megawatts of contracted IT power. The data centers won't be available until 2028, but it's another bet that CoreWeave is making today that should keep growth booming tomorrow.

Investors won't have to wait long for the next day when CoreWeave shares may be on the move. It reports its second-quarter results next week, after the market closes on Tuesday.

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2. Amazon I'll start by saying that buying Amazon on the day its shares hit a new all-time high isn't technically bargain hunting. However, it was Wood's largest purchase. I couldn't leave the country's fifth-most-valuable company by market cap out of the mix. Ark Invest was a buyer of Amazon for all five of Wood's aggressive growth ETFs on Monday, and was her biggest buy in four of them.

Unlike CoreWeave, investors already know how Amazon fared in the second quarter. It reported last week. Net sales rose 20% to $200.6 billion for the quarter, fueled largely by a 37% jump in its thriving and high-margin Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-hosting business. Its flagship e-commerce business still managed to grow in the mid-teens -- up 16% in North America and up 15% everywhere else -- but AWS is the reason Amazon just delivered its strongest top-line surge in five years.

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3. Rocket Lab Rockets go up. Rockets go down. In recent weeks, rocket stocks have largely gone down. This is often a dinner bell for Wood if she's a believer in the industry and certain players in that space. Speaking of space, Rocket Lab is no stranger to space. Unlike many upstarts, Rocket Lab has generated meaningful revenue for years as a leading provider of space systems and launch services.

It's not profitable yet, but analysts expect it to be on an adjusted basis next year and on a reported basis by 2028. Demand is booming, with an order backlog of $2.2 billion at the end of the first quarter. It reports second-quarter results next week. It was targeting $225 million to $240 million in revenue for the quarter in May, a 61% year-over-year increase at the midpoint. Investors may have turned their back on space stocks this summer, but reality offers a kinder level of stargazing.

© David Ryder / Getty Images

Amazon crossed $3 trillion in market capitalization for the first time on Monday, capping a blowout earnings week. Within the same news cycle, founder Jeff Bezos filed to sell roughly $4 billion of his own shares under a pre-scheduled trading plan, and CNBC’s Jim Cramer summed up the optics on X: “Cant begrudge Bezos for selling $4 billion shares…but what a buzzkill.”

The $3 Trillion Moment Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) closed at $284.02 on Monday, August 3, 2026, up 4.58% for the day, pushing the retailer into the four-comma club alongside Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Alphabet. The stock is up 16.33% over the past month and 25.40% year-to-date, and has climbed roughly 20.6% since the July 30 earnings report. For context, Apple sits at $303.42 and Microsoft at $487.65. AWS reaccelerated hard and analysts fixated on a $496 billion AWS order backlog disclosed alongside the earnings report.

The Earnings, Cleanly Explained Q2 revenue landed at $200.61 billion, versus a $196.46 billion estimate, the first quarter Amazon topped $200 billion. AWS revenue of $42.2 billion grew 37% year-over-year, its fastest pace in 18 quarters, with AWS operating income of $16.6 billion, up from $10.2 billion a year earlier, at a 39.4% operating margin. The company raised full-year 2026 capex guidance to about $220 billion, up from roughly $200 billion, citing higher memory costs and continued AI infrastructure buildout.

Amazon reported $5.75 versus a $1.82 estimate, but that number is misleading on its own. Of the $62.647 billion in net income, roughly $53.4 billion was non-operating, non-cash “other income,” primarily a mark-to-market gain on Amazon’s Anthropic stake, which was carried at $74.2 billion at the end of Q1 before this quarter’s revaluation. Strip that out and the operating quarter remains excellent on its own terms, with the headline beat inflated by the mark-to-market gain.

The Bezos Sale, In Context Bezos’s Form 144, filed Monday, August 3, signals intent to sell 15 million shares (roughly $4.07 billion) via Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. The sale was pre-planned, entirely independent of the $3 trillion milestone. The shares move under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted November 14, 2025, effective through February 26, 2027, set before the milestone existed. Fifteen million shares is a rounding error against Amazon’s 10.78+ billion shares outstanding. It follows a prior tranche in which Bezos sold 25 million shares for nearly $5.7 billion between late June and late July 2026, bringing his recent total to roughly $9.7 billion across the two programs. Proceeds have historically funded Blue Origin and philanthropy.

Cramer’s Buzzkill Cramer’s line concedes Bezos’s right to diversify a decades-old founder position (shares dating to Amazon’s original 1997 issuance) while flagging the awkwardness of the founder cashing out billions on the exact day the stock crosses a symbolic threshold. That is purely a matter of optics around timing. Nothing in the 10b5-1 mechanics suggests Bezos thinks $284 is the top. The plan simply hit its scheduled window during a historic moment.

What to Watch After the filing hit, shares pulled back roughly 2%, briefly dipping below $280 in after-hours trading. Prediction markets on Polymarket are pricing an 80.5% probability of Amazon closing down on August 4. The signal to watch over the next quarter is whether Q3 guidance of $197 to $202 billion in revenue, versus a $204.08 billion consensus, proves conservative once the AWS backlog converts. The operating quarter remains excellent, just not a 215% beat. Bezos’s plan hit its window during a historic moment, and if guidance proves conservative, the buzzkill fades fast.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

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S&P 500 companies are turning in their strongest earnings season in five years. And a handful of sectors are doing most of the heavy lifting.

Key Takeaways: S&P 500 blended earnings growth hit 47.4%, the highest rate since Q2 2021. Energy earnings jumped 135.3% year over year, the top gain among all 11 sectors. Tech led revenue growth at 35.6%, while communication services earnings rose 109.8%. Sixty-one percent of S&P 500 companies have reported second-quarter results so far. Of those, 86% have topped earnings estimates, according to FactSet. That beat rate is also above the five-year average of 78% and the 10-year average of 76%.

That kind of outperformance is pushing the index’s blended earnings growth rate to 47.4% year over year, according to FactSet. That is the highest rate since the second quarter of 2021. Still, the gains are not spread evenly. Energy, communication services and technology companies are posting some of the widest earnings gains of any sector this quarter, giving investors sector-specific ETFs to consider beyond a broad S&P 500 fund.

See more: Financial Sector ETF Hits Record High on Fintech Gains

In aggregate, S&P 500 companies are reporting earnings 31.4% above estimates, according to FactSet. That would, in fact, mark the highest surprise the index has posted since FactSet began tracking the metric in 2008. The previous record, 23.2%, was set in the second quarter of 2020.

Energy is out in front of all 11 sectors, with earnings growth of 135.3% year over year, according to FactSet. Revenue in the sector likewise climbed 31.7% over the same period. The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE) targets that group of oil, gas,and, energy equipment companies directly.

Communication services ranks second among sectors, with earnings up 109.8% year over year, according to FactSet. Revenue in the sector grew 15.2% as well. The Communication Services Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLC) tracks the media, entertainment, and telecom companies driving that growth.

Tech Leads the Pack in Earnings and Revenue Growth Information technology (IT) companies posted the largest revenue growth of any sector at 35.6% year over year, according to FactSet. Meanwhile, earnings for the sector grew 69.4% over the same period. The Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) gives investors a pure-play option for tapping into that growth.

Revenue growth across the index reached 14.1% year over year, according to FactSet. That is its highest mark since the fourth quarter of 2021. Companies topping revenue estimates, meanwhile, made up 77% of the index, above both the five-year and 10-year averages.

Excluding Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), the index’s blended earnings growth rate would fall to 28.8% from 47.4%, according to FactSet. Amazon’s results, for instance, included $53.4 billion in non-operating, pre-tax income tied largely to its investment in artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic. Alphabet’s per-share earnings of $9.11, meanwhile, far outpaced the $2.88 analysts had projected.

For more news, information, and analysis, visit our Sector Investing Content Hub.

AWS drives 60.3% of Amazon's operating income, with accelerating revenue/margin expansion and demand growth across custom chips/SaaS/compute backlog. These support AMZN's aggressive capex guidance and doubled AWS power capacity plans through 2027, supporting a long-term $1T annual revenue target. The elongated data center/server useful life may reduce depreciation risks, allowing them to deliver positive FCF from 2027 onwards, aided by accelerating commerce/ad/subscription trends.

Co investoři vlastně získávají, když investují do akcií společností Microsoft, Amazon a Google? To je podle ředitele EZ Primary Research Eda Zitrona klíčová otázka a odpověď naznačuje například to, jak by se měly vyvíjet tržby v oblasti cloudových služeb Googlu. Zatímco se totiž očekává, že vysoké investice do AI infrastruktury přinesou podobným společnostem diverzifikovaný růst příjmů, realita se může odlišovat. Navíc expert přidal řadu dalších úvah na téma umělé inteligence a s ní souvisejících investic.

Zitron řekl, že podle jedné z analýz banky UBS bude 27 % letošních tržeb u cloudových služeb Googlu generováno dvěma společnostmi – OpenAI a Anthropic. Příští rok už by to mělo být více než 48 %, což v absolutním vyjádření představuje 124 miliard dolarů. K tomu expert dodal, že investoři nakupují akcie společností investujících do AI infrastruktury ve víře, že tyto výdaje firmám zajistí diverzifikované příjmy z vysoké poptávky po AI službách. Výše uvedené ale ukazuje, že Google bude tyto služby „prodávat dvěma neziskovým společnostem… Většina lidí neví, že OpenAI je velkým klientem Google Cloudu.“

OpenAI podle Zitrona generuje nemalou část příjmů i u cloudových služeb Microsoftu a Amazonu. „Všem je prodáváno to, co je podle mého názoru lež, určitý skandál,“ komentoval tuto situaci, kdy podle něj existuje velká provázanost výsledků hyperscalerů a jejich růstu s poskytováním jejich služeb společnosti OpenAI a Anthropic. První z nich přitom mluvila o letošním vstupu na akciový trh, nyní se spíše hovoří o příštím roce.

Právě IPO společnosti OpenAI by podle experta mohlo být určitým zlomem, kdy věci vyplynou na povrch. Včetně toho, jak „těžce centralizované“ je celé odvětví datových center a jejich příjmů. Tedy jak závislé jsou na poskytování služeb pro OpenAI, která je zase ve svém dalším podnikání a rozvoji závislá na externím přísunu kapitálu. Zitron už před časem psal o tom, že podle dostupných informací „společnost OpenAI dosáhla v roce 2025 tržeb ve výši 13,07 miliardy dolarů a její čistá ztráta činila 38,53 miliardy dolarů“.

Pokud má být využita plánovaná kapacita nově budovaných datových center, nestačí na to podle experta poptávka ze strany zmíněných dvou firem. „OpenAI je společnost, která pálí hotovost,“ velká část jejího financování jde ze strany Softbank. K tomu expert zmínil stále aktivnější čínské společnosti a modely umělé inteligence, které mohou pro americké firmy představovat konkurenci a tlak na tržby. Tedy budoucí využití v současnosti budovaných kapacit.

Zitron také připomněl, že společnosti jako Google bývaly málo investičně a kapitálově náročné, generovaly vysoký volný tok hotovosti a měly velkou zásobu hotovosti v rozvaze. Investice do datových center to změnila a nyní jde o společnosti s vysokými hmotnými aktivy, které podle výše uvedeného využívá jen pár zákazníků. Navíc zmíněné dvě společnosti nebudou schopné využít nově budované kapacity. A bez nich podle experta poptávka také dostatečná nebude.

Amazon Web Services Chief Executive Officer Matt Garman says the company will keep investing in capex. “Today, demand still significantly outstrips supply and we're trying to build and invest to keep up with what customers are asking for," he said on "Bloomberg Tech.