Amazon drops its fourth-quarter earnings report today, and investors are zeroing in on three critical flashpoints: whether AWS can sustain its acceleration past 20% growth, how high the company's AI infrastructure spending will climb beyond $125 billion, and whether the recent elimination of 16,000 corporate jobs signals a deeper strategic reset. The numbers arrive as CEO Andy Jassy faces mounting pressure to prove Amazon isn't falling behind in the AI arms race, even as the company juggles a $50 billion potential investment in OpenAI and controversy over a $75 million documentary deal.
Amazon is about to reveal whether its massive bet on AI infrastructure is paying off—or just burning cash faster than its cloud competitors can keep up.
The e-commerce and cloud giant reports fourth-quarter results today, with Wall Street expecting $211.33 billion in revenue and earnings of $1.97 per share, according to LSEG data via CNBC. But the real action is happening inside Amazon Web Services, where analysts are projecting $34.93 billion in quarterly revenue and 21.4% year-over-year growth.
That acceleration matters. AWS growth ticked up from 18% in Q2 to 20.2% in Q3, and sustaining that momentum would signal that Amazon's aggressive AI buildout is actually translating into customer demand. The cloud unit has become the proving ground for CEO Andy Jassy's strategy of spending first and optimizing later—a gamble that's drawn skepticism from investors who've watched Amazon shares underperform other Magnificent Seven tech stocks.
"Amazon remains positioned as one of the worst performers among the Mag 7 given fears around the company being an AI laggard," Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a research note this week. They don't expect today's earnings to be "the magic bullet" that changes sentiment overnight, but believe the company can chip away at doubts throughout 2026.
