Tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia are the other four companies to have previously recorded a market value of $3trn.
Amazon became the fifth company ever to see its market value surpass the $3trn mark when its shares rose by about 5pc yesterday (3 August).
Tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia are the other companies to have previously recorded a market value of $3trn.
Amazon hit the milestone having first reached the $2trn market capitalisation mark in June 2024. It first reached the $1trn value benchmark in late 2018.
Last Thursday (30 July), the e-commerce and cloud computing giant published its results for the second fiscal quarter of 2026, with net sales increasing 20pc year-on-year to more than $200bn.
Its operating income was up 43pc to $27.5bn, while sales at its AWS cloud infrastructure division increased 37pc year-over-year to $42.2bn, its fastest growth in 18 quarters.
Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy said that “AWS is booming”, adding that “our AI and chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25bn”, which the company said amounts to “triple-digit percentages” growth year-on-year.
AI-driven demand for cloud and chips solutions contributed to AWS surpassing analysts’ forecasts for the quarter ending 30 June, causing the recent jump in Amazon share prices.
Jassy told investors on a conference call following the release of the earnings report that the company now projected capital expenditures for 2026 hit $220bn, up from the $200bn estimate it made in February and reaffirmed in April.
“But even at that amount, we will still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026, and I believe this dynamic will also be true in 2027 too,” Jassy said. “In fact, the demand we already have for 2028 is striking.”
Infrastructure spending and “investments in artificial intelligence” caused Amazon’s free cash status to see an outflow of $7.6bn for the preceding 12 months, the company said. This compares to a free cash flow inflow of $18.2bn for the 12-month period ended 30 June 2025.
Amazon has a 2GW deal with OpenAI for its Trainium capacity through AWS, as well as a 5GW deal for the same with Anthropic. The company is also investing $25bn into Anthropic.
AWS also has collaborations with up-and-coming Nvidia rival Cerebras; with Uber, for its Graviton and Trainium chips; and with Meta, to deploy tens of millions of AWS Graviton cores for its AI workflows.
Amazon is offsetting some of its AI expenses with large-scale layoffs at the company. In January, it cut about 16,000 jobs, which followed about 14,000 job cuts last October. Around 450 Irish jobs are understood to have been affected in this move.
Meanwhile, AWS could be set for a ‘gatekeeper’ designation in the EU due to the strength and prevalence of its market position as the largest cloud computing services provider in Europe.
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login