Amazon’s AI Gamble: A Long Shot in a Dark Alley

Amazon. The name hung in the air like cheap perfume. Last week’s numbers showed a twelve percent bump in sales, fourth quarter of ’25. Not bad. Earnings per share, though, a measly $1.95 against expectations of $1.97. A hairline fracture in the facade. The street doesn’t like hairline fractures.

But the real story wasn’t the quarter. It was the announcement. Two hundred billion dollars. That’s what they’re throwing at artificial intelligence in ’26. Two hundred billion. Enough to make a banker sweat. The market’s getting twitchy. Impatient. They want a return, and they want it yesterday. They don’t understand long plays. They want quick scores.

Management’s talking about a runway. A long one. They’re setting themselves up, they say. I’ve seen setups before. Usually, they end with someone holding a losing hand. But let’s look under the hood. There’s something there, buried in the silicon and code.

The AI Machine

Amazon Web Services. AWS. That’s where the muscle is. Twenty-four percent growth year-over-year. Highest in thirteen quarters. That’s not just a bump, that’s a climb. And they’re building on a bigger base now. Thirteen quarters ago, they were starting from twenty-one billion. Now it’s thirty-six. That means the dollars are adding up, and adding up fast. Like water in a rising tide.

Amazon does one thing well. They build a product, price it right, and watch the demand roll in. They’ve got Bedrock, a platform for developers. A lot of toys for the tech crowd. And the chips. They’re building their own AI chips, Trainium. Claiming they’re thirty to forty percent cheaper than the competition’s GPUs. That’s a claim that gets attention. Trainium2 has over 100,000 users. Trainium3 is just launched and almost sold out through mid-’26. They’re already working on Trainium4. It’s a machine building a machine. Efficient. Cold.

They’re also pushing into AI agents. Kiro, a coding service. User numbers up 150% last quarter. That’s a surge. Andy Jassy, the CEO, said they’re “monetizing capacity as fast as we can install it.” He’s not wrong. They’re turning potential into profit, and they have the experience to do it. They know where the demand is, and they’re building to meet it.

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The Long Odds

Despite the confidence, the market’s still skeptical. They’re not giving Amazon much leeway. But there’s a two-hundred-billion-dollar backlog in AWS business. And Bedrock spend increased sixty percent last quarter. That’s a serious number. It’s a signal.

Companies make mistakes. They don’t build enough to meet demand, and they lose business. It’s simple. If Amazon doesn’t get it, someone else will. There’s always a competitor waiting in the shadows. Plenty of companies have been written off for similar reasons, only to bounce back when the results finally hit the books.

Amazon will keep winning in AI. It’s not a certainty, nothing ever is. But the odds are stacked in their favor. And eventually, the stock will reflect that. It might take time. It might be a rough ride. But in this game, patience is a virtue. And Amazon has plenty of that.

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2026-02-11 21:12