Amazon stock weighs AWS growth against heavy AI investment
Published on 11/11/2026 at 13:56 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSCloud growth meets investment pressure
- AWS revenue growth accelerated to 39.3% in the third quarter, its fastest pace in nearly five years.
- Amazon expects fourth-quarter sales of 240.0 billion to 247.0 billion US dollars during the holiday period.
- Management continues to target approximately 220 billion US dollars of cash capital expenditures for 2026.
Amazon.com reported stronger cloud momentum alongside a much heavier investment burden in its third quarter ended September 30, 2026. In the company release published on October 29 and hosted in an SEC filing, Amazon said AWS revenue rose 39.3% year over year to 46.0 billion US dollars. That was the segment's fastest growth in nearly five years and lifted its annualized revenue run rate to 184 billion US dollars.
Group net sales increased 12% to 201.9 billion US dollars. Operating income rose 61% to 28.1 billion US dollars, producing a record 13.9% operating margin. AWS operating income climbed to 17.8 billion US dollars from 11.4 billion US dollars a year earlier, underlining the cloud division's role as Amazon's main profit engine.
AWS momentum strengthens
Management linked the acceleration to demand for both traditional computing and storage and newer artificial intelligence workloads. Amazon said Fortune 500 spending on its Bedrock inference service increased nearly sevenfold year over year, while total Bedrock token volume grew nearly 17-fold. Andy Jassy, Amazon's president and chief executive, said the company expects AWS revenue growth above 40% in both 2027 and 2028.
The earnings release also highlighted customer commitments and expanding AI capacity. Amazon signed new AWS agreements with companies including Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Salesforce and Oracle. It said tens of thousands of customers use Bedrock AgentCore and that customers deployed twice as many agents in the third quarter as in the prior three quarters combined.
Cash flow remains the trade-off
The investment cycle is absorbing substantial cash. Free cash flow for the twelve months through September 30 was an outflow of 42.4 billion US dollars, compared with an inflow of 14.8 billion US dollars in the comparable period. Amazon attributed the deterioration primarily to a 94.8 billion US dollar year-over-year increase in purchases of property and equipment, much of it tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company continues to expect approximately 220 billion US dollars of cash capital expenditures for 2026.
Net income fell to 20.7 billion US dollars from 21.2 billion US dollars, while diluted earnings per share declined to 1.89 US dollars from 1.95 US dollars. Amazon said the comparison was affected mainly by 9.5 billion US dollars of pre-tax gains from Anthropic investments in the year-earlier quarter.
Holiday outlook sets next test
Amazon guided for fourth-quarter sales of 240.0 billion to 247.0 billion US dollars, representing expected growth of 12% to 16% from the prior-year quarter. Operating income is expected to range from 28.5 billion to 33.5 billion US dollars, compared with 25.0 billion US dollars a year earlier. The forecast covers the key holiday period and gives investors the next test of whether retail demand, advertising and AWS expansion can offset the near-term cost of the infrastructure build-out.
Amazon.com stock traded at 243.40 euros on Lang & Schwarz at 13:50 CET on Wednesday, November 11, 2026.
Amazon.com stock at a glance
- Company: Amazon.com Inc.
- ISIN: US0231351067
- Home exchange: Nasdaq
- Lang & Schwarz price: 243.40 euros at 13:50 CET on November 11, 2026
US technology shares remain sensitive to the balance between artificial intelligence investment and near-term cash generation; investors can follow the S&P 500 for the wider market setting.
