Amazon’s AI Capex Is Paying Off and I’m Buying – AOL

Quick Read

• Amazon’s AWS growth surged from 20% to 37% over four straight quarters, with a $496B backlog and AI and chips businesses each topping $25B in annualized revenue.

• Amazon trades at a lower book value than Microsoft and carries minimal debt while Alphabet nearly doubled its long-term debt to $98B to fund expansion.

My Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) position keeps growing for one reason. I can now watch its AI spending turn into revenue, one quarter after another. Amazon spent $131.8 billion on capex in 2025 and raised its 2026 tech and infrastructure outlook to approximately $220 billion. Plenty of investors wince at those figures. To me, Amazon is building toll roads that customers have already lined up to use.

AWS Growth Is Speeding Up Alongside the Spending

Put the two trends side by side and the case gets clear. Quarterly capex rose from $35.10B in Q3 2025 to $54.21B in Q2 2026. Over the same stretch, AWS growth went from 20% to 24% to 28% to 37%. That last figure was the fastest AWS…