Amazon’s $200B Capex Grenade Rolls Across Earnings Call (Shareholders Dive for Cover)

“I’ve won… but at what cost?” - Andrew Jassey, probs

Amazon didn’t wait a full 24 hours before big-dogging Google’s capex flex. On its earnings call yesterday, Amazon basically told all of us sheep that it plans to drop metric f*k tone worth $200 billion on capex in 2026. For context, that’s a 56% jump from 2025, and roughly $50B more big ones than Wall Street thought was even on the table.

(Source: Giphy) 

Naturally, the stock got smoked. Shares fell about 8% after hours, partly because Amazon missed EPS by two cents (crime of the century), but mostly because investors heard “$200B” and immediately pictured a very expensive hole in the ground full of Nvidia GPUs. But zoom out for half a second and the picture gets clearer.

(Source: CNBC) 

See, AWS just posted its fastest growth in 13 quarters, up 24% YoY, and Jassy flat-out said demand is running ahead of expectations… not just for AI workloads, but for boring, bread-and-butter cloud stuff too. Translation: companies aren’t just experimenting anymore. They’re moving real infrastructure. And Amazon is trying to build faster than everyone else. Bet.

Of course, most of that $200B is headed straight into AWS… data centers, chips, networking, robotics, satellites, the whole industrial-strength kit. If you were wondering why Project Rainier exists… that $11B AI data center built basically just for Anthropic… this is the sequel. Meaning, they’re going full send to monetize capacity as fast as they can install it. Which literally tells you the writing on the wall here. 

(Source: Giphy) 

Yes, Microsoft’s cloud is growing faster. Yes, Google’s cloud just posted its best growth since 2021. And yes, Amazon is very aware the narrative has shifted from “undisputed king” to “prove it.” Well, friends… this is Amazon proving it, loudly and with money (share holder mental health be d*mned). Meanwhile, the rest of the business is doing… fine. Revenue beat. Ads are still a monster (+23% YoY to $21.3B). AWS numbers came in ahead of expectations. Net income grew. Guidance was basically in line. But none of that mattered once the capex grenade rolled across the floor.

Why? Because Wall Street hates one thing more than uncertainty, and that’s uncapped spending during a cycle where everyone’s terrified AI might eat software margins alive. Google said $185B and flinched. Amazon said $200B and didn’t blink. Obviously, you can argue about timing, ROI, or whether $200B is absolutely insane or not… but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the hyperscalers aren’t tapping the brakes. They’re flooring it… and daring the market to keep up. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.