Exclusive · Satire
Amazon promises two trillion-dollar businesses, starting with a $42.4 billion hole
Amazon's free cash flow swung to a $42.4 billion outflow on AI spending. Its CEO says it may soon run two trillion-dollar businesses. The warehouse of the future is mostly receipts.
By Connor O'Brien ·
Why it matters: Amazon's AI spending turned its free cash flow negative, a live test of how long investors will fund the buildout on promises.
For information only, not investment advice. Prices delayed.
Tickers: AMZN
Amazon ($AMZN) has found a new way to deliver: in reverse. Over the trailing twelve months, free cash flow swung to an outflow of $42.4 billion, per the company's own release, driven mainly by a $94.8 billion jump in purchases of property and equipment. The release explains it in a sentence of its own: “This increase primarily reflects investments in artificial intelligence.”
A year earlier, that same line was an inflow of $14.8 billion. Somewhere in a fulfillment center, a forklift who asked not to be named because he is a forklift reports that the pallets now arrive labeled “AI, fragile, nonrefundable.”
The corner office is thinking bigger. CEO Andy Jassy said in the release: “There has never been a trillion dollar revenue business, and we may have two of them in the next 5-10 years.” Step one, apparently, is building a very large hole to put them in.
To be fair to the bonfire, it has kindling. AWS sales rose 39% to $46.0 billion in the third quarter, and operating cash flow climbed 29% to $168.3 billion over the trailing twelve months. The money is coming in. It's just leaving faster, primarily for artificial intelligence.
And the shopping cart isn't empty yet. The release says: “We continue to expect 2026 cash capital expenditures to be approximately $220 billion.” Analysts at a firm that exists only in this paragraph have reclassified the outflow as “pre-revenue for the second trillion.”
Wall Street, which per CNBC spent October handing the Nasdaq its worst losses since March 2025 amid AI spending concerns, took the news calmly. Amazon closed at $245.63 on Monday, up 2.2% as of 4:00 PM ET, on a day the Nasdaq fell 1.07%.
So Amazon now offers fast delivery on nearly everything. The free cash flow ships later, in the trillion-dollar years, assuming the box survives the trip.
Sources
Tags: ai · big-tech · earnings