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.
