This Is The Biggest Reason I Keep Accumulating Amazon Stock After Jumping 10% This Year
AWS just posted its fastest growth in 18 quarters, yet the most compelling reason to keep buying Amazon stock has nothing to do with last quarter's numbers at all.
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I keep hitting the buy button on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction), and after the stock added 10.47% year to date to reach $254.98, I am still adding. The reason is simple. AWS is speeding up on a very large base, and every other part of this business is compounding alongside it. When the biggest cloud franchise on earth is accelerating instead of maturing, I want to own more of it, not less.
Why AWS Alone Justifies Every Share I Buy
Andy Jassy said it plainly on the July call: “AWS is booming right now.” AWS grew 37% year over year to $42.232 billion in Q2, its fastest growth in 18 quarters, and it did so at a 39.4% operating margin. That single segment is now running at a $169 billion annualized revenue run rate with a backlog of $496 billion growing triple digits year over year. As a long-term owner, I read that backlog as revenue that is already spoken for.
The AI numbers under the hood are the second reason I keep buying. Amazon’s AI and chips businesses each eclipsed $25 billion in annualized run rates with triple-digit growth. Anthropic committed to up to 5 GW of Trainium capacity, and OpenAI committed roughly 2 GW starting 2027. Graviton is now used by 98% of Amazon’s top 1,000 EC2 customers. This is what pricing power in silicon looks like.
The third pillar is that the rest of the company is compounding too. Advertising delivered $19.809 billion, up 26%. Consolidated revenue reached $200.606 billion, and operating income climbed 43.24% to $27.461 billion. Analysts have taken notice: the fiscal 2026 EPS consensus has moved to $12.49 from $8.72 just 30 days ago, with 45 upward revisions against one downward.
Why I Skip Microsoft, Alphabet, and Walmart Here
The names a reader reaches for first are Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Walmart (NYSE:WMT). I own some of those too, but my incremental dollar goes to Amazon because no one else stacks a $496 billion cloud backlog on top of a $19.8 billion advertising business growing 26% and a retail engine that grew worldwide paid units 17%. Azure is a fine business, and Google Cloud is real, but I can only see one company delivering “about 80% more than our largest increase ever” in a single quarter of cloud revenue adds. Walmart runs a great store, while Amazon runs Bedrock and Trainium.
A Risk I Am Not Waving Away
Free cash flow turned negative at -$7.6 billion TTM. Q2 capital expenditures hit $54.208 billion, and management has guided to roughly $200 billion of capex for 2026. If AI demand cools, that spending will look premature (the power, cooling, and networking suppliers riding the same wave are the subject of our free AI infrastructure report). Here is why I am still buying anyway: Amazon spends data-center capital two years before monetization begins, servers break even in a little less than three years, and useful lives stretch at least five to six years on chips inside buildings that last 30-plus years. Most AI capacity is contracted for at least five-year terms. That is a rented factory with contracted demand.
What Keeps My Buy Button Active
The lion’s share of 2027 capacity is largely reserved, some 2028 capacity is already spoken for, and Amazon is on track to double power capacity by the end of 2027 versus 2025. Jassy told owners he now believes AWS can become “a trillion dollar annual revenue business for us in time.” I plan to own the shares when it gets there.
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Alex Sirois is a financial writer with experience spanning both retail and institutional investing. He has written for InvestorPlace and held roles at BNY Mellon and Bernstein, giving him a perspective that bridges Main Street portfolios and Wall Street analysis.
Alex holds an MBA from George Washington University and has built his career across multiple industries, including e-commerce, education, and translation — a breadth of experience that informs how he breaks down complex financial topics for everyday investors. His writing is conversational, actionable, and grounded in long-term, buy-and-hold investing principles.
At 247 Wall St., Alex focuses on delivering analysis that is both accessible and useful, with a clear emphasis on helping readers make more informed decisions with their money.
