AI and robotics are about to improve Amazon's margins in a way the market is overlooking. x.comÂ
Steven Fiorillo
Seeking Alpha Analyst, Basis Point Podcast Co-Host
AWS's rapid growth in a huge business makes the long-term outlook decisively bullish for Amazon and the AI ecosystem. AWS revenue grew 39.3% year over year in September 2026; management guides for growth above 40% in 2027 and 2028. Amazon is always very conservative with guidance, making that AI outlook doubly bullish. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Amazon's margins can expand materially as AWS compounds, advertising scales and robotics strips labor from fulfillment, a rerating the market misses while it punishes the spending. AWS revenue hit $128.7B last year with backlog up 40% to $244B, and Andy Jassy said AI could lift AWS to $600B a year by 2036. Amazon has 1 million robots deployed; Vulcan handles about 75% of items and Sequoia stores inventory up to 75% faster. Net margin was about 10.8% on 2025 revenue of $716.9B. x.comÂ
Amazon's AWS AI rents look limited because NVIDIA backs neoclouds and Anthropic can set AWS's cut of Bedrock Claude tokens. Those tokens run on AWS-funded Trainium. Enterprise AI earns ~2 points above capital cost in the 2035 base case; shared hyperscaler advantages and new rivals limit upside, though 1-5 points is plausible. Retail ads pose a fat-tail risk despite a base case that Amazon figures them out. Market skepticism about AWS capex has toned down the bearish view. x.comÂ
Amazon's AWS acceleration keeps the AI investment bet compelling, but its financing burden is growing. AWS grew 39%, its fastest in five years, and operating margin reached a record 13.9%. Yet trailing free cash flow is negative $42.4B as capex exceeds cash generation, and long-term debt rose from $65.5B to $173.1B. The long-term bet is that AI changes everyday life enough to justify that spend. x.comÂ
Amazon's profits should explode once capex settles because it is replacing human labor with AI and robots while bringing in record revenue. Enterprises will get more output per dollar from electricity and compute than from salaries, so the value of human labor trends toward zero. Amazon laying off employees while raising capex and posting record revenue signals that shift, which makes owning the companies doing the replacing the way to stay ahead. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Amazon's unusual long-term AWS guidance looks desperate and leaves its stock looking dead. @P_Remarks says Amazon normally avoids long-term guidance and speculates that its projection of over 40% AWS revenue growth in both 2027 and 2028 was a Hail Mary to offset a quarter weak relative to expectations. x.comÂ
Amazon is a robotics play as AI moves into native, physical intelligence, and it is set to massacre Walmart. It can manufacture any result it wants, and its margins have been held back for more than ten years. For now the stock is weighed down by a weak consumer and questions about where it sits on the AI frontier, making a beta-driven selloff a chance to buy. x.comÂ
Amazon's record AI spending looks backed by AWS demand, despite pressure on near-term profit. AWS grew 39% to $46bn, and CEO Andy Jassy projects growth above 40% in both 2027 and 2028. Quarterly capex reached $77.3bn, almost $20bn above expectations; the Q4 profit guide missed and retail ads softened. AWS acceleration makes the drop worth buying. Overweight; $370 target. x.com x.comÂ
Amazon's negative free cash flow and far-off AWS guidance add to its investment risk. Free cash flow is -$42 billion. True_yes_man describes Jassy extrapolating fourth-quarter AWS revenue at 40% growth for five years. That guide cannot be taken seriously; it resembles the Tesla and Nvidia playbook of projecting years ahead to support the market into the midterms, then recalibrating later. x.com x.comÂ
AI embedded throughout software could bring huge future token spend to Amazon and Alphabet, whose AWS and GCP clouds host software builders and offer AI platforms. Ramp data show VC-backed firms spend 10 times more per employee on AI monthly than PE-owned and other firms, a possible leading indicator of software using more tokens relative to people. VC-driven demand is vulnerable to capital-cycle swings, but longer term incumbent software may become AI-native or be replaced. x.comÂ