Amazon Market Cap Tops $3 Trillion for First Time as Cloud Growth Lifts Tech Shares
Amazon’s market value surpassed $3 trillion for the first time on August 3, making it the fifth US company to reach the milestone. The stock closed 4.6% higher at a market capitalization of just over $3.07 trillion, fueled by AWS cloud revenue growth of 37% in the second quarter of 2026, the strongest since 2021. Amazon took just over two years to double from $2 trillion to $3 trillion, far faster than the six-plus years needed to go from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. The cloud earnings surge also boosted other tech shares, with Microsoft and Amazon both gaining nearly 5% on the day.
Amazon’s stock climbed rapidly in early trading on August 3, pushing the company’s market value past $3 trillion for the first time. It became the fifth publicly traded firm globally to hit that milestone. Shares rose more than 5.7% at the session high to $287.16, before closing with a 4.6% gain, giving the company a total market capitalization slightly above $3.07 trillion. Nvidia, Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple had previously entered the $3 trillion club. From first crossing $2 trillion in June 2024 to now topping $3 trillion took about two years, whereas the leap from $1 trillion to $2 trillion required more than six years.
Amazon’s second-quarter 2026 results, released last week, showed revenue at its cloud-computing unit AWS grew 37% year-on-year, the fastest pace since 2021. Adjusted earnings per share were $1.97 on revenue of $200.61 billion. On Friday, Amazon’s stock surged more than 15% in a single day—its biggest one-day gain in over 14 years—adding nearly $400 billion in market value.
AWS chief Matt Garman said on August 3 that the company is signing five-year long-term contracts with customers to lock in data-center demand in advance. He noted that demand for AI infrastructure still far exceeds supply, and Amazon is accelerating data-center construction and investment in artificial intelligence. He added that as generative AI shifts from model training toward enterprise inference applications, a growing number of clients are embedding AI capabilities into real business processes, further driving cloud-computing demand. The year-over-year revenue growth for AWS was the fastest since 2021, directly addressing market doubts about whether the cloud business can absorb large-scale AI investments.
Other cloud-services stocks also advanced. Microsoft and Amazon each rose nearly 5% on the day, CoreWeave jumped more than 10%, Nebius gained over 7%, and Iren added more than 5%. For much of the past three months, Amazon’s shares had weakened notably, dropping from the record high set on May 6 to a stage low last month with a cumulative decline of nearly 18%. Amazon’s year-to-date gain in 2026 exceeds 23%, leading the so-called Magnificent Seven. In contrast, the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF gained 3% over the same period, while the S&P 500 rose about 10%.
Palantir reported that its US commercial revenue grew 149% year-on-year to $764 million, while US government revenue rose 90%. The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to between $8.150 billion and $8.158 billion, and also lifted its operating-profit and free-cash-flow outlooks. After the results, Palantir’s shares jumped more than 13% in after-hours trading. Chief executive Alex Karp said enterprise demand for “AI sovereignty” continues to grow, with more customers wanting to deploy AI within their own data environments.
On August 4, Apple again filed a legal challenge with the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, opposing the British government’s demand that it open access to users’ iCloud encrypted data. A hearing is scheduled for September 2026. The UK government had previously issued a “technical capability notice” under the Investigatory Powers Act, requiring Apple to provide a means to bypass iCloud Advanced Data Protection. Apple withdrew the feature from the UK in 2025 but has refused to create a backdoor for government access. Apple maintains that end-to-end encryption is vital for user privacy and data security. The UK government argues that in cases of terrorism, serious crime and child protection, law enforcement must be able to lawfully obtain relevant communications. Liberty and Privacy International have joined Apple in challenging the legality of the order.
On August 3, Lumentum chief executive Michael Hurlston said that as demand for optical interconnects in AI data centers surges, the supply gap for the critical optoelectronic material indium phosphide has widened to more than 30%, a further increase from the previous quarter. The company operates five InP wafer fabs but still cannot meet customer demand. Research firm SemiAnalysis noted that continuous-wave distributed feedback InP lasers used for AI near-packaged optical interconnects are particularly tight, and capacity expansion remains constrained by manufacturing processes. Indium phosphide is the irreplaceable light-emitting material in silicon photonics solutions, and AI optical interconnect platforms from Nvidia, Broadcom, Marvell, Cisco and others all require InP lasers as light sources.