New York, Feb 13, 2026, 07:20 EST — Premarket
Amazon.com slipped 0.4% to $198.74 before the bell Friday, following a Thursday close at $199.60. 1
The stock tumbled into “bear market” territory, Wall Street’s term for a 20% slide from recent highs, following eight straight days in the red, MarketWatch reports. Investors appear increasingly rattled by Amazon’s hefty 2026 artificial intelligence spending targets. 2
Timing’s key here. U.S. stock-index futures barely budged with investors waiting for January CPI data set for 8:30 a.m. ET—a release that has a reputation for jolting bond yields and reshaping bets on rate cuts. Bob Savage, BNY’s head of markets macro strategy, called the “central question” whether the recent wave of capex will actually drive “durable earnings growth.” 3
AI-linked stocks aren’t moving in lockstep anymore. Chipmakers, data center operators, and software names are all getting reassessed fast, as some sectors start to look more like laggards than leaders. “You’ve clearly seen that breakdown in terms of the monolithic AI trade,” Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, told Reuters. 4
Amazon’s capital spending keeps drawing attention, with the company projecting it will pour roughly $200 billion into areas like data centers, chips, and equipment in 2026. The number’s hefty enough that it would actually surpass operating cash flow, according to The Motley Fool’s Asit Sharma. D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria put it plainly: “Amazon has to invest at these levels just to stay in the race.” Echoing that mood, CEO Andy Jassy said, “We are being incredibly scrappy.” 5
Amazon’s cloud division hasn’t let up on rolling out new offerings, even as questions linger among investors about how soon the returns will show. On Thursday, AWS announced its EC2 M8azn general-purpose instances are now broadly available. These machines rely on AMD EPYC processors and target users with high-frequency workloads. 6
Amazon Bedrock has rolled out support for the latest open-weight models in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) region, AWS said, broadening the options for customers developing generative AI applications. 7
Bulls have something to worry about: spending is still outpacing revenue. Should AI demand falter or cloud pricing come under pressure, investors might see the whole buildout as too much, punishing valuation multiples further. And if CPI comes in hot, higher yields would just pile on more pain.
Friday’s inflation numbers aside, the U.S. trading week is getting cut short, with Walmart earnings and several economic reports in focus—personal consumption expenditures price index, plus an early look at Q4 GDP, are both due, according to a Reuters “Week Ahead” column. “It’s all this whack-a-mole game,” said Art Hogan at B Riley Wealth, pointing to the market’s constant search for which sector could be hit next by AI. 8
Feb. 25 is circled on the AI trade calendar: Nvidia will report earnings that day, offering a look at whether giants like Amazon are driving enough demand to warrant the industry’s current spending spree. 9
