Amazon stock surges on booming cloud growth, eyes best day in 11 years

Amazon just posted a quarter that reminded Wall Street why it’s still the 800-pound gorilla of cloud computing. After reporting Q2 2026 earnings on July 30, the stock shot up between 9% and 14% in after-hours trading, putting it on track for its best single-day performance in roughly a decade. The star of the show was AWS, which pulled in $42.2 billion in revenue. That’s a 37% year-over-year increase, the strongest growth rate the cloud division has posted in 18 quarters. AI is doing the heavy lifting CEO Andy Jassy pointed to elevated enterprise AI spending as a primary driver of the cloud unit’s acceleration during the earnings call. Both Amazon’s AI and chips businesses have now crossed $25 billion in annualized run rates. AWS operating margins expanded to 39.4%, producing $16.6 billion in operating income from the cloud segment alone. Amazon raised its full-year capital expenditure forecast to $220 billion. The bigger picture by the numbers Total net sales for Q2 hit $200.6 billion, a 20% increase year-over-year. Operating income came in at $27.5 billion, climbing 43% compared to the same period last year. Looking ahead, Amazon guided Q3 net sales between $197 billion and $202 ...