After being essentially flat over the past year, Amazon is poised for a breakout.
There are currently an even dozen companies with a market cap of $1 trillion or more, but only three are members of the prestigious $3 trillion club: Nvidia at $4.6 trillion, Apple at $3.9 trillion, and Alphabet at $3.7 trillion (as of this writing).
With a market cap of nearly $2.2 trillion, it seems like it’s just a matter of time before Amazon (AMZN 2.39%) joins that elite group. Yet recent events have sent some investors heading for the hills, as they seem to have forgotten the path that brought the e-commerce and cloud bigwig here. Given its multipronged growth strategy, I would submit that Amazon will join the fraternity of triple-trillionaires sooner rather than later.
Image source: Getty Images.
A rare triple threat
When it comes to tech companies, Amazon is in a league of its own, with three highly successful businesses. The company is the undisputed industry leader in two areas and a leading contender in a third.
While it wasn’t the first, Amazon provided the textbook definition of a successful e-commerce business, becoming the “Everything Store” in the process. The company added another notch to its belt in 2025, becoming the world’s largest retailer, taking the title from Walmart.
Fourth-quarter results for its e-commerce segment paint a compelling picture of its success. Net sales of $213.4 billion increased 14% year over year, with 57% of the top-line coming from digital retail or third-party seller services. This fueled net income of $24.9 billion, up 18%.
The second industry-leading business in Amazon’s quiver — and by far the most important — is its cloud infrastructure offering, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon still leads the space it pioneered two decades ago, providing on-demand computing, anywhere access to software, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, to name just a few.
Amazon still controls 28% of the market, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, with 21% and 14%, respectively, according to Statista. Furthermore, the cloud segment — driven by accelerating demand for AI continues to grow at a remarkable pace, up 30% year over year in the fourth quarter. AWS accounted for 18% of Amazon’s revenue and 57% of operating income in 2025, helping fund the company’s other growth initiatives — like AI.
Then there’s Amazon’s fast-growing advertising business, driven by its product search, Prime Video, live sports programming, and more. Advertising revenue grew 23% year over year to $21.3 billion in the fourth quarter, representing 10% of total revenue. This makes Amazon the world’s third-largest digital advertiser, behind just Google and Meta Platforms.
Today’s Change
(-2.39%) $-5.02
Current Price
$205.09
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$2.2T
Day’s Range
$203.11 – $208.39
52wk Range
$161.38 – $258.60
Volume
3M
Avg Vol
47M
Gross Margin
50.29%
This trifecta of successful businesses could just be the tip of the iceberg, as Amazon is also one of the leading authorities in AI, with more than 1,000 AI apps and services in development or in use by its cloud customers, with plans to develop many more. “AI will be a substantial catalyst,” according to CEO Andy Jassy.
To meet the extraordinary demand for its cloud and AI services, Amazon plans to spend $200 billion in capital expenditures (capex) in 2026, up from $131 billion in 2025. The sheer magnitude of the increase caught investors off guard, sending the stock down as much as 10% on the heels of Amazon’s financial report. Jassy said (emphasis mine), “We are monetizing capacity as fast as we can install it.” This suggests the demand already exists, and fair-weather investors simply overreacted to the company’s robust spending plans.
The path to $3 trillion
Amazon has a market cap of roughly $2.2 trillion (as of this writing), so its stock price will only need to increase by about 36% to reach $3 trillion. The company is expected to generate revenue of $807 billion in 2026, according to Wall Street, giving it a forward price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of less than 3. Assuming its P/S ratio remains constant, Amazon would need revenue of roughly $1 trillion annually to support a $3 trillion market cap.
Wall Street currently expects Amazon’s revenue growth to be about 11% annually over the next five years. If the company meets that standard, it could achieve a $3 trillion market cap as early as 2029. However, Amazon’s growth history suggests it could accomplish that benchmark much sooner.
Finally, at less than 29 times earnings, Amazon trades at a discount compared to the S&P 500‘s current multiple of 30. Even factoring in its recent decline, Amazon has delivered stock price gains of 633% over the past decade, far exceeding the 251% gains of the S&P 500.
This explains why Amazon has become a compelling opportunity as it trudges toward $3 trillion.
