Amazon.com (AMZN.O) enters 2026 with Wall Street still penciling in double-digit gains, with analysts tracked by StockAnalysis.com setting an average 12-month price target of $284.70 — a forecast of about 23% upside from the stock’s Dec. 31 close. The same dataset shows analysts expecting fiscal 2026 revenue of $811.23 billion and earnings per share (EPS), a measure of profit per share, of $8.11. StockAnalysis
The projections matter now because investors are shifting from the “build it” phase of artificial intelligence to the “prove it” phase. The core question for Amazon in 2026 is how quickly its biggest profit drivers can outpace the bill for data centers and chips.
That debate sharpened this week after Brookfield was reported to be starting a cloud business called Radiant that would lease chips inside data centers directly to AI developers — a model Reuters said could add pressure on Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle to show tighter energy and capital discipline. Reuters
MarketBeat, which aggregates broker research, puts Amazon’s average 12-month stock price forecast at $295.50, with estimates ranging from $218 to $360, and says Wall Street’s consensus rating is “Moderate Buy.” MarketBeat
Amazon has argued the spending is a race for capacity. In October, CEO Andy Jassy said “AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022,” while CFO Brian Olsavsky pegged full-year capital expenditures, or capex, at about $125 billion and said it would rise again. Reuters reported then that AWS revenue grew 20% in the September quarter and accounted for roughly 60% of Amazon’s operating income. Reuters
For 2026, the bull case still runs through AWS — Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud unit — and whether it can accelerate growth while keeping margins on track. Advertising and retail efficiency remain the other levers investors watch for operating profit support.
The forecasts imply steady improvement rather than a single breakthrough quarter. EPS growth is one of the numbers that feeds valuation models when investors debate how much of today’s AI investment translates into tomorrow’s profits.
Capex is the counterweight. Data centers and AI chips are long-lived bets, and the market has been quick to focus on free cash flow — cash left after running the business and funding investments — when spending rises faster than near-term earnings.
Competition remains central to the 2026 narrative. Microsoft is AWS’s biggest cloud rival, while Google continues to push aggressively in AI infrastructure; any shift in market share or pricing tends to show up first in cloud growth rates.
Brookfield’s reported move is a reminder that the constraint is not only chips, but power and real estate to run them. If new models pull workloads or bargaining power away from the hyperscalers, pricing and utilization could become sharper pressure points.
On the consumer side, Amazon’s e-commerce business faces the usual uncertainties around spending and shipping costs. Investors will be watching whether efficiency gains offset wage and logistics inflation as the company keeps funding new growth bets.
Regulatory and political risk sits in the background for the largest tech platforms, and Amazon is no exception. Any new scrutiny that affects marketplace practices, cloud contracting or labor costs can weigh on sentiment even when earnings forecasts are rising.
With targets clustered in the high-$200s, the early-2026 wager is that Amazon can show the AI buildout is turning into measurable earnings. The next several quarters will test whether the company’s cloud and ad engines can do more than absorb the bill.
