The Catch-22 Behind Amazon’s Big AI Spending Plans | The Motley Fool

The Catch-22 Behind Amazon’s Big AI Spending Plans | The Motley Fool

Most investors aren’t fans of the plan, but they’d dislike the outcome of the alternative even more.

Given the stock’s sizable price drop immediately following the announcement, it’s clear that most investors aren’t big fans of Amazon‘s (AMZN 0.39%) 2026 spending plans. The e-commerce giant said it plans to earmark $200 billion for capital expenditures, most of which will be allocated to Amazon Web Services, where the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) business operates. For perspective on this figure, for the entirety of 2025, Amazon turned $717 billion into net income of $77.7 billion.

Given this swell of impending outlays, shareholders’ concerns are easy to understand. Just bear in mind there may be an even higher cost in not making this investment.

The kicker: Amazon is one of the few players in the AI data center space that’s actually achieving a respectable return on the money being invested in this infrastructure.

Image source: Getty Images.

Amazon is losing market…

https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/02/14/catch-22-behind-amazon-stock-ai-spending-plan/