Amazon reports record revenue in fourth quarter

SEATTLE – Amazon reported strong results in the fourth quarter, with revenue of $213 billion topping analysts’ expectations and setting a record for the Seattle-based tech giant.

But the performance was overshadowed by Amazon’s announced intention to accelerate spending on data centers that the company and its customers need as they jockey for advantage in the artificial intelligence boom.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is budgeting $200 billion for capital projects this year, about a third more than it spent in 2025. Jassy expressed confidence that the capital expenditures will pay off in the long run.

“With such strong demand for our existing offerings and seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, low-earth orbit satellites, we expect to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures across Amazon in 2026, and anticipate strong long-term return on invested capital,” he said February 5 in announcing the company’s financial results for the year-end holiday period.

“I think this is an extraordinarily unusual opportunity to forever change the size” of Amazon, he told analysts.

The company just missed expectations with earnings per-share of $1.95, compared to $1.86 a year earlier. Net income of $21.2 billion was up from $20 million last year.

Amazon posted revenue growth across its cloud computing, e-commerce, advertising and other businesses.

Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing unit, had revenue of $35.5 billion in the quarter, up from $33 billion in the preceding quarter and exceeding expectations. The 24% increase was AWS’ fastest growth in more than three years, Jassy said.

AWS’s growth is being held in check by a lack of capacity, Jassy said, despite the fact that Amazon added more data center capacity than any company globally in 2025. “What we’re continuing to see is, as fast as we install this AI capacity, we are monetizing it,” he said. “So, it’s just a very unusual opportunity.”

Sales at Amazon’s e-commerce unit increased 10% to $83 billion. Sales at physical stores rose 5% to $5.8 billion. Amazon’s retail business has become more profitable as it has leaned harder on delivery speeds to get more orders to shoppers within a day or two of purchase. The company said the number of items it sold in the fourth quarter increased 12% year on year.

Amazon announced last month it is closing all Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations, a total of 72 stores nationwide, concentrating its efforts instead on its Whole Foods Market locations and grocery delivery from Amazon.com.

Advertising revenue increased 23% from a year ago to $21.3 billion. For the full year, Amazon’s growing ad business took in $68 billion.

Amazon said revenue from Prime memberships and other subscriptions increased 14% in the quarter to $13.1 billion.

At the same time, Amazon has cut about 30,000 corporate jobs since October in what Jassy has described as an effort to reduce bureaucracy and speed up innovation so the company can operate like the “world’s largest startup.” Amazon closed out 2025 with nearly 1.6 million employees, excluding seasonal and contract workers.