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Amazon's $200 Billion Capex Shock: Why AMZN Tumbled 10% After Earnings

Amazon's Q4 earnings beat on revenue but missed on EPS, sending the stock down 10% after the company unveiled a $200 billion capital expenditure plan for 2026—a figure that stunned retail investors and sparked intense debate across Reddit.

  1. Amazon reported Q4 revenue of $213.4 billion (up 13.6% YoY) but EPS of $1.95 missed estimates by a penny.

  2. The company's $200 billion 2026 capex forecast—more than double 2025's $83 billion—drove a 10% after-hours selloff.

  3. Reddit discussions focused on the AI infrastructure spending race, with Amazon joining Google, Microsoft, and Meta in a capex boom that has no modern precedent.

The Earnings That Broke the Internet

AMZN
$AMZN reported its Q4 2025 results after the bell on Thursday, and the numbers were a classic mixed bag. Revenue of $213.39 billion came in above the $211.33 billion consensus, while earnings per share of $1.95 landed a penny below the $1.97 estimate. r/stocks users noted the beat on the top line, but the miss on the bottom line—combined with a jaw-dropping $200 billion capex forecast for 2026—sent the stock plunging 10% in after-hours trading.

The capex figure was the real shocker. Wall Street had been expecting around $147 billion, per the r/wallstreetbets post that broke the earnings highlights. Amazon's actual guidance of $200 billion—up from $83 billion in 2025—represents a 2.4x increase in a single year. That kind of spending acceleration has no modern parallel outside of the AI boom.

Reddit Reacts: "Hold My Beer"

The r/stocks thread titled "GOOG: I'm spending $180b on Capex. AMZN: 'Hold my beer'" captured the mood perfectly. One user laid out the staggering numbers: Meta at $115–135 billion, Microsoft on track for $150 billion, Google at $175–185 billion, and now Amazon at $200 billion. For context, Google's entire 2020 capex was $22 billion. The AI infrastructure buildout has increased spending by a factor of 8x in five years.

Another r/stocks post highlighted that Amazon's AWS cloud business grew 24% YoY to $35.58 billion—its fastest pace in 13 quarters—driven by AI demand and the company's custom Trainium chips. The same post noted a seven-year, $38 billion contract with OpenAI for cloud services, suggesting the spending is tied to real revenue commitments.

The Broader Market Context

The selloff in

AMZN
$AMZN came on a day when software stocks were already in freefall—the sector fell for an eighth consecutive session, its longest losing streak since May 2021. The r/stockmarket thread on layoffs noted that U.S. employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest for any January since 2009, with Amazon among the companies making significant reductions.

The r/wallstreetbets thread "Asking for one more prayer" saw a user roll gains into puts on QQQ, SPY, and

AMZN
$AMZN ahead of earnings, hoping for a downturn. That bet paid off—at least for the moment.

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$AMZN

What the Analysts Are Saying

The Motley Fool's take on Thursday was that Amazon's cloud business is "accelerating" and the stock offers "attractive long-term risk-reward" at current valuations—but called it "risky given the company's changing financial profile." The $200 billion capex number changes the earnings story from a beat-and-raise to a spend-and-build narrative.

Meanwhile, Benzinga's market roundup noted that the broader tech rotation was already underway before Amazon's report, with Alphabet falling despite strong earnings and Broadcom gaining on Google's capex guidance. The market is pricing a 90% chance of the Fed holding rates steady in March.

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