$169 billion in annual recurring revenue led Andy Jassy to raise Amazon's long-term AWS outlook, saying the cloud unit could eventually top $1 trillion in annual sales.
37% year-over-year AWS growth last quarter — its fastest since 2021 — was driven by AI demand, including heavy spending from start-ups and partners such as Anthropic.
$220 billion in 2026 capital spending is being directed mainly to expand AWS data-center capacity, while the unit's trailing-12-month operating margin stood at 37%.
At similar margins, $1 trillion in AWS revenue would imply roughly $300 billion to $400 billion in operating earnings, versus Amazon's $98 billion total operating earnings over the past 12 months.
A 20% average growth rate would put AWS near $1 trillion in recurring revenue by early 2036, underscoring how central AI and cloud demand have become to Amazon's long-term valuation.
As AWS races toward a trillion-dollar empire, how many billions are enterprises silently wasting on idle cloud resources and AI sprawl?
With AWS facing severe capacity shortages through 2027, will Amazon's $220 billion infrastructure gamble pay off or create massive stranded assets?
Can the global power grid actually sustain the immense data centers required for Amazon's trillion-dollar AI ambitions without facing catastrophic failures?