Amazon Q2 profit surges on AWS, raises capex to $220B for AI

Amazon's second-quarter 2026 results underscore a pivotal shift in the company's investment narrative: AWS has emerged as the dominant short-term catalyst, with 37% revenue growth and strong profitability offsetting concerns about free cash flow turning negative as capex accelerates. The US$220 billion（約35兆円） capital expenditure plan for 2026 directly ties to AWS expansion and the AI infrastructure race that now dominates how investors should think about Amazon's future. Record net income of US$62.65 billion（約10兆円） in Q2, boosted by the Anthropic stake, masks the underlying tension at the heart of the bull case: whether Amazon can convert massive, upfront AI and cloud investment into durable, high-quality earnings without eroding margins or stretching the balance sheet.

Investors face a wide range of valuations—the Simply Wall St Community values Amazon between US$230.61 and US$542.92 per share—reflecting genuine uncertainty about how AI infrastructure returns will unfold. The company's 2029 revenue projection of US$1092.0 billion（約170兆円） and earnings of US$149.6 billion（約24兆円）, implying a US$312.99 fair value, provides one plausible endpoint, but that outcome depends entirely on demand strength and pricing power holding up as Amazon deploys record capital. The main risk is that if demand softens or returns fall short of expectations, the combination of record capex and slowing cash generation could force a reckoning with balance-sheet leverage and return expectations.