Amazon Stock Soars on Record AWS Growth and Rising AI Investments

Amazon's stock price surged by 15% after releasing its second-quarter 2026 earnings, driven by significant growth in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud business and expanding artificial intelligence (AI) operations.

AWS reported $42.2 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 36.7% year-over-year increase. The company's AI and custom chip businesses each surpassed $25 billion in annualized revenue, demonstrating triple-digit growth rates.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy highlighted AWS's record revenue increase and backlog, stating, 'We added over $4.6 billion in revenue quarter over quarter, about 80% more than our largest increase ever. Our backlog stands at $496 billion, growing triple digits year over year.'