Amazon joins the $3 trillion club as AI and cloud growth fuel historic rally

Amazon just became the latest tech giant to cross the $3 trillion market cap threshold, a milestone it reached on August 3 after a blistering post-earnings rally. The company now sits alongside Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Nvidia in what is becoming an increasingly exclusive, increasingly AI-obsessed club. The catalyst was a Q2 earnings report that landed on July 30, and the market’s response was not subtle. Amazon’s stock surged more than 15% in the week following the release, adding over $550 billion in market cap in a matter of days. AWS is the engine, AI is the fuel Amazon Web Services posted operating margins of 39% in Q2, a number that would make most enterprise software companies weep with envy. Demand for cloud infrastructure, particularly the kind that powers AI workloads, continues to accelerate. CEO Andy Jassy responded to that demand by doing something investors typically hate: raising spending guidance. Full-year 2026 capital expenditure estimates jumped from $200 billion to $220 billion, driven largely by rising chip costs tied to the AI boom. The road from $2 trillion to $3 trillion Amazon first crossed the $2 trillion mark in June 2024. Getting to $3 trillion too...