Amazon shares jumped 10% in premarket trading Friday after the company topped second quarter expectations, driven by an acceleration in Amazon Web Services that one analyst covering the stock described as a genuine home run for the company. The results stood in sharp contrast to the mixed reception several other mega cap earnings reports have received this season.
AWS generated $42.2 billion in second quarter revenue, up 36.7% year over year, with strength across both its core cloud business and its expanding AI services. Amazon disclosed that its AI and custom chip businesses have each individually surpassed a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate, a figure that underscores just how quickly the AI infrastructure side of the business has scaled. The company’s custom chip business is now growing at a triple-digit year-over-year rate.
A Record Quarter of Growth
CEO Andy Jassy told investors on the earnings call that AWS added over $4.6 billion in revenue quarter over quarter, roughly 80% more than the company’s largest previous quarterly increase. The segment’s backlog now stands at $496 billion, growing at a triple-digit rate year over year. Jassy noted that customers continue choosing AWS for the breadth of its capabilities, particularly the ability to run AI inference near existing applications and data, a capability AWS offers more extensively than its competitors.
AWS is now running at approximately a $170 billion annual revenue run rate, more than four times larger than it was in 2019, illustrating the scale of growth the cloud division has achieved over the past several years.
The Capex Number That Matters
Heading into the report, Wall Street had been closely watching two things: AWS growth and capital expenditures tied to AI infrastructure. Amazon delivered on both fronts, but not in the direction some investors might have expected given the market’s recent skepticism toward AI spending. The company raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to approximately $220 billion, up from its prior guidance of roughly $200 billion.
In a market environment where companies like Oracle and Tesla have seen their stocks punished for similarly aggressive AI-related spending increases, Amazon’s reception was notably different. Wall Street appeared willing to look past the higher spending given AWS’s accelerating growth and expanding operating margins, a combination that suggests the capital is translating into measurable revenue rather than simply funding future capacity that has yet to prove out. Jassy indicated that demand for AI and cloud computing continues to outstrip available server capacity, with planned 2027 expansion already largely booked into 2028.
What It Means for Smaller Companies in the AI Supply Chain
For investors tracking the broader technology and infrastructure ecosystem, Amazon’s report offers a useful counterpoint to the AI spending anxiety that has weighed on chip and infrastructure names throughout the summer. When a hyperscaler raises capital expenditure guidance and the market responds positively rather than punitively, it signals renewed confidence that AI infrastructure demand remains durable, at least when that spending is paired with visible, accelerating revenue growth like AWS delivered this quarter.
That distinction matters considerably for smaller companies supplying components, power infrastructure, cooling systems, and specialized hardware into the broader AI buildout. A $220 billion capital expenditure plan does not get executed through Amazon’s own engineering teams alone. It flows through an extensive supplier base, and this quarter’s results suggest that demand signal remains firmly intact even as some large cap names in the space have faced renewed investor scrutiny in recent weeks.
