Amazon likely to raise 2026 capex guidance, CEO Jassy signals on July 30

Amazon's earnings report on July 30 comes at a critical moment for the hyperscaler industry. Alphabet has already signaled the capex arms race by raising its full-year 2026 guidance to $195–205 billion, putting it at or above Amazon's current $200 billion guidance. This move reflects the industry-wide pressure to build out AI infrastructure rapidly, driven by what companies describe as staggering demand. Jassy has previously emphasized that Amazon is not gambling on AI but responding to customer demand, noting that AWS already has customer commitments for a substantial portion of its 2026 capex and expects high confidence in monetization and returns on invested capital. However, investors are increasingly nervous about the aggregate spend: the Magnificent Seven are expected to deploy over $700 billion on capex in 2026 alone, raising questions about whether returns will justify the outlay. Recent spikes in memory prices add another cost pressure, as companies must spend more on NAND flash and DRAM chips to feed GPUs in data centers. The market has already braced for Amazon to announce a capex increase, meaning a guidance hike may be priced in—but a meaningfully larger raise could still trigger stock pressure, while maintaining current guidance could be seen as a relative positive.