Amazon's market capitalization exceeded $3 trillion for the first time in history following the release of a quarterly report that surpassed analyst expectations. Shares rose approximately 4% — the company's best trading day since May 5. However, the most interesting aspect of this report is not the record capitalization, but an admission from the CEO himself: the company physically cannot build sufficient capacity to meet demand for artificial intelligence.
Adjusted earnings per share reached $1.97 against expectations of $1.82, with revenue hitting $200.61 billion compared to a forecast of $196.47 billion. However, the main driver of growth is not retail, but the cloud platform AWS, whose revenue reached $42.2 billion, exceeding the forecast of $40.54 billion. The reason is demand for services related to artificial intelligence.
The company is spending more than planned and still losing to demand
Amazon raised its forecast for capital investments in 2026 from $200 billion to $220 billion. According to Andy Jassy, the reason is the rising cost of memory and other infrastructure for AI development.
"Even at this level of investment, we still won't have enough capacity to satisfy all the demand we see in 2026. And I believe this situation will persist into 2027. In fact, the volume of demand we're already seeing for 2028 is striking," Jassy said.
This admission should be read not as a complaint, but as a practical signal to the market: a deficit in computing power and memory is not a temporary delay, but a horizon stretching several years ahead. A company with Amazon's resources cannot buy or build enough data centers, even with a $220 billion annual budget.
Not just Amazon
Amazon became another major technology company reporting rapid growth in cloud business thanks to AI. Last week, Microsoft reported 43% growth in Azure revenue, while Google Cloud grew by 82%. South Korea's Samsung Electronics, meanwhile, posted record profits in the second quarter of 2026 thanks to sales of memory chips — the very same components whose price increases prompted Amazon to revise its capital expenditures.
A chain emerges: demand for AI increases memory prices, which forces cloud giants to spend more, and chip manufacturers earn record profits from this. The question that should be asked next is whether this investment cycle can be sustained by demand itself, or whether one of the players will first hit a funding ceiling when capital expenditures grow faster than revenue from cloud services.
