Andy Jassy Says AWS Will Hit $1 Trillion in Revenue. First, Amazon Will Spend $220 Billion.

Key points

• Amazon expects to spend approximately $220 billion in capital expenditure in 2026, the majority earmarked for AWS cloud infrastructure, with even more planned for 2027.
• AWS posted $184 billion in annualised revenue as of the latest quarter, up 39 percent year-on-year, its sixth straight quarter of steady growth.
• CEO Andy Jassy forecast AWS revenue growth above 40 percent in both 2027 and 2028, targeting a $1 trillion annual revenue business within five to ten years.
• Amazon shares fell roughly 6 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday after the spending figures were disclosed.

Andy Jassy has a number in his head, and he keeps saying it out loud. On Thursday's quarterly earnings call, Amazon's chief executive told Wall Street that AWS, the company's cloud computing division, could one day pull in a trillion dollars a year. "There has never been a business with a trillion dollars of annual revenue," he said. That target isn't next year's problem. Jassy's timeline is five to ten years. But the spending required to get there lands right now.

What is Amazon actually committing to spend?

Amazon expects to spend around $220 billion in capital expenditure during 2026 alone, the bulk of it going to AWS data centres and the chips that fill them. Jassy said the company plans to spend "meaningfully more" in 2027, though he gave no exact figure.

Investors weren't reassured. Analysts on the call pressed Jassy repeatedly to explain what financial returns would justify numbers that large. He called AI adoption a "once in a lifetime opportunity" and said Amazon intended to "invest to continue being the leader." Microsoft, as we noted when covering Oracle's record AI cloud quarter, is one of several rivals spending heavily while also posting strong growth. Shares fell about 6 percent in after-hours trading.

Why does AWS think it can grow that fast?

AWS is already a significant business. Its annualised revenue run rate reached $184 billion at the time of the call, growing 39 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. Jassy said he expects that growth rate to stay above 40 percent through 2027 and 2028.

The argument is straightforward: companies are moving computing to the cloud, and AI workloads, which require enormous processing capacity, are accelerating that shift. AWS earns money by renting out that capacity.

Jassy described enterprise AI adoption as still in its "very early days," which is both a caution and a pitch. Early days means the bulk of spending from business customers hasn't arrived yet. Worth reading alongside this: our story on Amazon's stake in Anthropic shows exactly what kind of AI partnerships Amazon is using to pull that enterprise demand toward AWS.

For AWS customers who rent Amazon's servers to run their own apps, none of this immediately changes prices or service levels. The build-out is designed to ensure capacity keeps pace with demand. Whether that demand arrives at the scale Jassy is betting on is the only question that matters.

Common questions

What is AWS and why does it matter if it grows?

AWS, short for Amazon Web Services, is the division of Amazon that rents computing power and software tools to businesses over the internet. It's one of the most profitable parts of Amazon, and its growth funds a large share of everything else the company does.

Should ordinary Amazon shoppers or small businesses care about this?

Not immediately. The trillion-dollar target is a long-range forecast, and the spending is aimed at keeping Amazon's servers fast and available as AI demand grows. If the bet pays off, cloud services could become cheaper and more capable. Shareholders bear the downside if it doesn't, not customers directly.