Amazon: How much of the profit is real, and will $220 billion pay off?
Amazon (AMZN) trades at around $250 a share, a of roughly $2.7 trillion, one of the five most valuable companies listed in the US. Its second quarter of 2026 looked spectacular on the surface: rose 20% to $200.6 billion, and more than tripled to $62.6 billion, or $5.75 per share against $1.68 a year earlier. But most of that jump in profit didn't come from selling anything. It came from a rise in the estimated value of Amazon's stake in Anthropic, a gain that exists on paper and not in the bank. At the same time, Amazon plans to spend about $220 billion on data centers and equipment this year, a bill large enough to consume all the cash its businesses generate. Two questions sit underneath the : how much of today's profit is real, and will the spending pay off?
What Amazon does
Amazon is several very different businesses under one name. It sells products online, both its own and other sellers', rents computing power to businesses, sells advertising, and charges for memberships. Cloud and ads produce most of the profit, while retail brings in most of the .