Online holiday shopping could reach a record $275.1B, up 6.7% YoY, as consumer spending remains resilient despite stubborn inflation and elevated interest rates. Pre-season shoppers are already on the holiday hunt, well ahead of Black Friday, and are expected to spend $95.8B in October alone. Amazon's October Prime event has helped reshape the traditional holiday shopping calendar, and retailers are positioning to capture the pre-season rush.
Microsoft's Azure cloud business is now running at a $100 billion annual pace, backed by a $678 billion contracted backlog. Amazon Web Services has locked in a $100 billion, decade-long commitment from Anthropic, and part of it is for cloud capacity provided by Amazon's own Trainium AI chips.
Amazon's "About You" feature offers observations about your purchases and conversations with Alexa for Shopping. It can be a little snarky, shoppers said.
Although Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) stock price has fallen by more than 11% since it hit an all-time high on August 3, 2026, trading at $255.39 on October 6, Shyam Patil, a Wall Street analyst at Susquehanna, expects a rally towards a peak over the next 12 months.
Amazon is spending $200 billion in a single year to dominate cloud infrastructure, but its free cash flow just turned negative and its stock has slipped 8% from its post-earnings peak.
Amazon's cloud infrastructure platform will remain a linchpin of the AI market. CoreWeave's neocloud business is booming as its backlog hits record levels.