Amazon's stock market value surged past $3 trillion on Monday, marking the fifth time a company has reached this milestone. The e-commerce giant's cloud arm, Amazon Web Services, showed its fastest growth rate in over four years, contributing to the significant increase in its value.
Shares of Amazon closed at a record high of $284.02 in New York on Monday night, up $12.44 or 5 per cent from the previous day's close. This represents a 23.05 per cent increase in the stock's value since the start of the year.
Amazon joins a select group of companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet, which owns Google, in surpassing the $3 trillion valuation mark. Apple leads the pack with a valuation of $4.5 trillion, while Nvidia is valued at $5 trillion and Microsoft at $3.6 trillion.
The significant rally in Amazon's stock began last week, following its second-quarter results. The company reported a 36.7 per cent increase in net sales for Amazon Web Services, with the division generating $42.2 billion in revenue. Group net sales rose 20 per cent to $200.6 billion, while operating income increased by 43 per cent to $27.5 billion.
Amazon also raised its capital spending forecast for 2026 to about $220 billion, highlighting the company's continued investment in its business. CEO Andy Jassy described Amazon Web Services as "booming" in a statement accompanying the results, citing the growth of AI and chips businesses.
Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, noted that Amazon's results had a broader impact on the market. "Amazon is probably the most emblematic of the economy right now," he said. "It's a consumer story and it's an AI story." Hackett added that the results had shifted sentiment across the wider market, with the "big scepticism" around AI spending being alleviated.
Amazon Web Services is a key driver of the company's investment in the UK, with plans to invest £40 billion in infrastructure over three years. The division has also committed £8 billion to UK data centres by 2028, driven in part by demand from AI developers such as OpenAI, which signed a $38 billion agreement with AWS in 2025.
