Amazon stock weighs AWS acceleration against AI spending
Published on 11/10/2026 at 13:03 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWSCloud growth meets spending pressure
- AWS accelerated to its fastest growth in nearly five years while becoming an increasingly important profit engine.
- Amazon's infrastructure program is weighing on free cash flow as demand for cloud and artificial intelligence capacity expands.
- The holiday quarter and the pace of future capital spending are the next major tests for investors.
Amazon's cloud business is accelerating, but the investment required to support that growth is becoming the central issue for investors. In a report published Monday, November 9, The Motley Fool highlighted the sharp improvement at Amazon Web Services after the company's third-quarter results.
AWS revenue rose more than 39 percent year over year in the third quarter to 46 billion US dollars, the fastest growth rate for the cloud division in nearly five years. The unit's annualized revenue run rate reached 184 billion US dollars, while operating income advanced 55 percent to more than 17 billion US dollars. AWS now supplies about 60 percent of Amazon's operating income, according to the report.
Demand supports the investment case
The strongest argument for Amazon's spending program is customer demand. AWS ended the quarter with a contracted revenue backlog of 578 billion US dollars, representing triple-digit growth from a year earlier. Fortune 500 customer spending on Amazon Bedrock, the company's artificial intelligence inference service, was about seven times higher than a year earlier.
Chief Executive Andy Jassy has said AWS could become a 1 trillion US dollar business within five to 10 years. Management also expects AWS growth to remain above 40 percent in both 2027 and 2028. Those expectations give investors a longer-term framework for judging the returns on new data centers, chips and related infrastructure.
Cash generation remains the risk
The opposing concern is the scale and timing of the investment. Amazon has lifted its 2026 capital spending forecast to about 220 billion US dollars from 200 billion US dollars. Spending is reducing free cash flow in the near term, and the company has indicated that the pressure may continue until its new data centers begin generating revenue.
That creates a demanding test for the stock. Strong AWS growth and a large backlog suggest that capacity is being added against visible demand rather than purely in anticipation of a market that may never develop. At the same time, any slowdown in artificial intelligence demand would extend the period before the infrastructure investment produces attractive cash returns.
Amazon stock traded at 238.93 euros on Lang & Schwarz at 13:01 CET on Tuesday, November 10, 2026.
Amazon.com Inc.
- Company: Amazon.com Inc.
- ISIN: US0231351067
- Trading venue: Lang & Schwarz
- Price: 238.93 euros at 13:01 CET on November 10, 2026
- Business focus: E-commerce, cloud computing and digital services
The next major focus is Amazon's holiday quarter, when investors will assess whether retail demand can offset the pressure from the infrastructure cycle. The market is also likely to scrutinize the company's plans for 2027 spending and the speed at which AWS growth converts into operating cash flow.
Broader US technology sentiment remains relevant for the shares; see Current market reports.
