New York, Feb 16, 2026, 10:05 EST — Market closed
- Amazon ended Friday at $198.79, slipping 0.4%.
- Shares have fallen roughly 13.9% in 2026, with investors hashing out the merits of a $200 billion capital spending plan.
- Traders now look ahead to Tuesday’s reopening, with Nvidia’s Feb. 25 results looming as the next big test for AI demand.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.O) finished Friday at $198.79, off 0.4%. Shares have now dropped roughly 13.85% for 2026, with investors showing impatience over the pace of returns from hefty artificial-intelligence investments. That pullback cut Amazon’s market value by about $343 billion, Reuters calculated, bringing the figure down to $2.13 trillion.
U.S. stock markets are shuttered Monday for Presidents Day, reopening Tuesday. For Amazon, the timing is tricky; the stock now reflects a running bet on just how far investors will let AI infrastructure spending go before they insist on more tangible returns.
Amazon warned investors it’s planning to pour around $200 billion into capital expenditures in 2026—think data centers, servers, equipment—sparking a sharp 9% drop in shares on Feb. 6. MoffettNathanson called the scale of the planned spending “materially greater than consensus expected.” AJ Bell’s Russ Mould noted the market is shifting away from names “where positive surprises may be hard to achieve.” Reuters
The forecast dropped alongside earnings, with shares sliding 11.5% after hours as Amazon set its sights on first-quarter operating income between $16.5 billion and $21.5 billion—about $1 billion of that connected in part to the satellite internet project, according to Reuters. Jassy dismissed comparisons to smaller cloud providers: “it’s very different having 24% year-over-year growth on $142 billion annualized run rate.” Dave Wagner at Aptus Capital Advisors highlighted the market’s wariness over the hefty capex fueling that growth. AWS still accounts for a smaller slice of total revenue, but more than 60% of Amazon’s operating profit, Reuters pointed out. Reuters
The Financial Times reported over the weekend that Jassy has pulled together key segments of Amazon’s AI and chip operations, pushing most of the investment to AWS data centers and in-house silicon like Trainium and Graviton. “We have deep experience understanding demand signals in the AWS business,” Jassy said, making the case that Amazon knows how to turn that scale into profit. Financial Times
That’s the question investors will be marking when AMZN kicks back into action—can AWS demand ramp up quickly enough to fill out all that new capacity without crimping free cash flow, the money left after operations and capital spending. Right now, the stock’s trading as if there’s still no clear answer.
Competition hasn’t made the numbers any kinder. Both Microsoft and Alphabet are carrying hefty AI capex tabs. With corporate clients able to move workloads from one cloud provider to another, pricing leverage gets squeezed—especially as expenses head higher.
The restart Tuesday puts the spotlight on whether investors stick with dumping the “capex stories” or decide that the spending spree will ultimately pay off for AWS down the road. Volumes may swing sharply, especially with the shortened holiday week.
There’s a clear risk here: should AI demand slow or projects stretch out, Amazon might find itself stuck with costly excess capacity and higher depreciation on its latest data center equipment. A misstep in AWS growth would probably weigh more heavily on the stock than a slowdown on the retail side.
The AI trade’s next big test lands Feb. 25, when Nvidia is set to report earnings—a key update on demand for the data-center chips powering the hyperscalers, those top cloud giants. If Nvidia misses, attention could quickly swing back to Amazon and its spending strategy.
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