Amazon is writing checks that would make most sovereign wealth funds blush. The company’s 2026 capital expenditure plan now stands at $220 billion, the vast majority of it aimed at AI infrastructure for its AWS cloud division. That figure started at roughly $200 billion when first announced in February, then got bumped up in the Q2 earnings update on July 30 thanks to rising memory chip costs.
Why Amazon keeps raising the tab
CEO Andy Jassy has framed the spending as demand-driven rather than speculative. AWS revenue grew 37% year-over-year in Q2 2026, the fastest growth rate the division has posted in 18 quarters. According to Jassy, demand for AWS capabilities still outpaces what the company can supply, with customer commitments stretching into 2028.
Amazon has inked partnership deals totaling $75 billion with firms including Anthropic and OpenAI, with the OpenAI agreement alone reportedly exceeding $100 billion. When your customers are pre-paying at that scale, spending aggressively on infrastructure starts to look less like gambling and more like fulfilling orders.
For context, Amazon’s full-year capex in 2025 landed between $128 billion and $131.8 billion. The 2026 figure represents roughly a 67% increase at the midpoint.
