Amazon jumps 12% on AWS growth as Apple drops 7%
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- Amazon shares surged 12% in premarket trading on Friday after AWS revenue jumped 37% year-on-year in Q2 — the strongest cloud expansion since 2021 — while Apple fell 7% despite beating expectations on earnings, revenue, and iPhone sales
- Apple issued weak guidance for the current quarter, projecting 9-11% revenue growth versus analyst expectations of 12%, citing 'supply constraints' from a memory shortage and competition for chip manufacturing capacity
- Amazon raised its full-year capex forecast to $220 billion (up from $200 billion) even as investors scrutinized Big Tech AI spending, with Forrester analyst Tracy Woo noting that AWS's growth shows infrastructure investments are 'meeting market demand rather than outpacing it'
- Apple has raised prices on Mac and iPad due to component shortages, with analysts expecting an iPhone price hike to follow; Apple's stock is up 23% YTD in 2026 versus Amazon's roughly 4%, making Apple the relative laggard heading into earnings despite year-long outperformance
- The divergence extended Thursday's pattern of investor sorting: Meta fell 8% while Microsoft rallied 15%, rewarding cloud growth that justifies capex and punishing companies whose AI spending looks premature
Why it matters: Investors are now demanding that AI and cloud capex be backed by visible revenue growth — Microsoft and AWS cleared the bar with 15% and 12% premarket pops, while Meta's 8% drop and Apple's 7% slide punished companies whose spending outran or whose AI strategy remained underwhelming. For shareholders, the second-order consequence is that Amazon's $220B capex increase (up from $200B) was absorbed because AWS grew 37%, but Apple's supply-driven guidance miss exposes a company seen as an 'alternative trade' to capex-heavy tech with no comparable AI growth story.
