Amazon joined NVIDIA, Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft to become the latest firm with a market capitalization of more than US$ 3 trillion on Monday after shares climbed 5 percent to hit a record high of US$ 285.01. Shares in the firm have gained 23 percent so far in 2026.
As Reuters reports, the rally comes on the back of a stellar Q2 for Amazon, which reported last week that net income for the quarter was US$ 62.6 billion compared to US$ 18.2 billion in Q2 2025. Leading that growth was a boom for AWS.
“AWS is booming, growing 36.7% year-over-year in Q2—our fastest growth in 18 quarters—and our AI and Chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion,” Andy Jassy, Amazon President and Chief Executive Officer, said last week.
On the back of those results, the company has raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to US$ 220 billion from US$ 200 billion. According to Jassy, this adjustment is necessary to account for higher memory costs and Amazon’s continued investment in AI and cloud infrastructure. Even with that adjustment, Amazon says it doesn’t have enough capacity to meet the demand it is seeing in 2026 and believes the same will be true in 2027, and possibly in 2028 as well.
Amazon is the latest big tech firm to adjust its capex for 2026 in response to growing demand for AI and cloud computing. In July, Google parent company Alphabet raised its capex guidance to an upper limit of US$ 205 billion. The big winner for the firm was Google Cloud which saw revenue rise 82 percent to US$ 24.8 billion.
Buoyed by news of the increased spending, Google’s shares rose 3.6 percent on Monday along with Microsoft’s share price rising 4 percent, Meta’s rising 6 percent, and Oracle’s rising 5 percent over the course of the day.
An analyst told Reuters that the capital expenditure hikes being announced are a signal to investors that the AI market is still ripe with opportunity.
The rise in Amazon’s market cap gives credence to forecasts made by Mordor Intelligence regarding the growth of the AI market. The market research and advisory firm estimates that by the end of 2026, the AI market will have a value of US$ 434.42 billion, growing to US$ 2.50 trillion by 2031.
Hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are pushing billions into their infrastructure to ensure their environments remain easily accessible and competitive and the market appears to be responding strongly given the rise in market capitalization happening throughout the sector.