Amazon to Double Capital Expenditure to $200 Billion in 2026, Primarily for AWS Data Center Expansion
February 6, 2026
Amazon.com Inc. announced plans to dramatically increase its capital investments to approximately $200 billion in 2026, a move that underscores the intensifying infrastructure arms race among cloud providers to capture the booming demand for artificial intelligence and enterprise cloud services. The planned expenditure, which doubles the company's forecast for 2025, signals a massive bet on the long-term growth of its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division.
The e-commerce and cloud giant revealed the ambitious spending target alongside its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results. For the full year 2025, Amazon's operating income reached $80 billion, up from $68.6 billion the previous year, with AWS contributing $45.6 billion of that total. In the fourth quarter alone, AWS operating income rose to $12.5 billion from $10.6 billion a year earlier, driven by sustained strong demand.
On an earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy clarified that while the capital expenditure (capex) covers all company activities, the "predominant" share is allocated to AWS. "Some of it is for our core workloads, which are non-AI workloads, because they're growing at a faster rate than we anticipated. But most of it is in AI, and we just have a lot of growth and a lot of demand," Jassy stated. He defended the scale of the investment against market skepticism, emphasizing it was not a "quixotic top-line grab" but a calculated expansion based on proven demand forecasting and operational efficiency within AWS. "We have confidence that these investments will yield strong returns on invested capital," he added.
The announcement was met with caution by investors, with Amazon's share price falling as much as 11 percent following the disclosure. This reaction mirrors broader market unease over the enormous sums being deployed for AI infrastructure by leading technology firms, a trend recently observed with Microsoft following its own capex revelations.
The planned $200 billion infusion will accelerate AWS's already vast global data center build-out. The cloud hyperscaler, which a leaked report last year indicated operates more than 900 data centers globally, is currently developing major projects like a new $3 billion campus in Vicksburg, Mississippi. This unprecedented level of investment highlights the critical importance of physical infrastructure scale in the competitive cloud and AI landscape, where capacity, power, and proximity are key differentiators.
Source: datacenterdynamics
