Amazon Stock Jumps 15% as AI Growth Lifts Q2 Earnings
Amazon reported second-quarter 2026 net sales of $200.6 billion, up 20% year on year. Net profit surged 245% to $62.6 billion, including a $53.4 billion pre-tax gain from its stake in AI company Anthropic. AWS operating profit jumped 64% to $16.6 billion, while its AI and chip businesses each reached annualized revenue of over $25 billion. The stock soared 15.32%, lifting market capitalization to $2.93 trillion, as capital spending on AI infrastructure hit $53.1 billion in the quarter and future demand remained unfilled.
On July 30, Amazon reported second-quarter 2026 financial results. Total net sales rose 20% to $200.6 billion from $167.7 billion a year earlier. Operating profit increased 43% to $27.5 billion. Net income was $62.6 billion, up approximately 245% from $18.2 billion in the year-ago period, and diluted earnings per share stood at $5.75.
Net income for the quarter included a $53.4 billion non-operating pre-tax gain largely from the fair-value change in its equity investment in AI company Anthropic. Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounted for the majority of operating profit and generated about one-fifth of total revenue.
AWS operating profit rose 64% to $16.6 billion, yielding an operating margin of about 39%. AWS backlog reached $496 billion, up more than 100% from a year earlier. In addition, the annualized revenue from AWS artificial intelligence and the company’s self-developed chip business each surpassed $25 billion. Amazon’s advertising revenue grew 26% to $19.81 billion.
Capital expenditure in the quarter was $53.1 billion, directed mainly at AWS infrastructure and generative AI investments. Chief Executive Andy Jassy stated that even at this level of spending, computing supply would not fully meet customer demand in 2026, that a supply gap would persist in 2027, and that a significant volume of orders had already been locked in for 2028.
Following the release, Amazon’s stock rose as much as 9% in after-hours trading. At the close on July 31, the shares had jumped 15.32%, giving the company a total market value of $2.93 trillion. In the first half of 2026, the number of items available to Prime members for same-day or next-day delivery increased more than 40% year on year. On an earnings call, Jassy said approximately 85% of global IT spending is still deployed on-premises, and that enterprise migration to the cloud and wider adoption of AI would continue to drive AWS growth over the next 10 to 20 years.