NEW YORK, Feb 24, 2026, 10:02 EST — Regular session
- Amazon shares were little changed early Tuesday after a $12 billion Louisiana data-center announcement
- Investors are still digesting Big Tech’s swelling AI infrastructure budgets and the hit to cash flow
- Nvidia results due Wednesday are shaping up as the next big read-through for AI demand
Amazon.com shares were down about 0.1% at $205.16 in morning trade on Tuesday, steadying after a 2.3% slide a day earlier as investors weighed the company’s latest data-center expansion. Amazon on Monday laid out plans to invest $12 billion in Louisiana as part of a push to build out computing infrastructure, and the stock is down 9.4% so far this year. (Google)
Why it matters now: Wall Street has turned jumpy about how long the biggest cloud groups can keep writing checks for artificial intelligence without a clear payback. Bridgewater Associates said Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet are expected to invest about $650 billion in AI-related infrastructure in 2026, up from $410 billion in 2025, and warned the boom is entering a riskier stretch. “Compute demand continues to significantly outpace supply,” Bridgewater co-chief investment officer Greg Jensen wrote in a note to clients. (Reuters)
That scrutiny lands with Nvidia set to report results on Wednesday, a report investors are treating as a barometer for the AI hardware pipeline and, by extension, the budgets at the big cloud buyers. “People are so concerned about AI spending — whether we’re in a bubble,” said Ivana Delevska, chief investment officer at Spear Invest. (Reuters)
Amazon’s Louisiana plan calls for new data-center campuses across Caddo and Bossier parishes. The company said the project is expected to create 540 full-time jobs at the sites and support about 1,710 additional positions in the community, and it plans to pay for energy and utility infrastructure needed for the campuses. “Amazon’s $12 billion investment in northwest Louisiana will build next-generation data center campuses to support AI and cloud computing,” said David Zapolsky, Amazon’s chief global affairs and legal officer. (Amazon News)
The market backdrop is not helping. U.S. consumer confidence ticked up in February, but the index remains a live wire for retailers because it can foreshadow shifts in discretionary spending — the kind that shows up quickly in online shopping demand. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index rose to 91.2 in February from an upwardly revised 89.0 in January, it said on Tuesday. (PR Newswire)
For Amazon, the debate is less about this one state announcement and more about the pace of capital expenditure — the long-term spending that can sap free cash flow even as it adds capacity. Investors have been asking, with less patience lately, when the extra servers translate into faster AWS growth and sturdier margins.
The competitive frame is tight. Amazon Web Services is battling Microsoft and Alphabet for AI workloads, while chip supply and power availability have become hard constraints on how quickly new capacity can go live. That puts a premium on any signal that demand is still outrunning supply, not just shifting between providers.
But the downside case is easy to sketch. If AI spending cools, or if customers pause on large orders after a heavy 2025–2026 buildout, the same investment cycle that supports growth could look like overhang, especially if electricity costs rise or local permitting slows projects.
Amazon has also faced the softer risk that comes with big infrastructure builds: community pushback, environmental scrutiny, and delays that can stretch timelines and muddy return estimates. None of those show up in quarterly revenue until they do.
Traders’ next hard catalyst is Nvidia’s earnings after the close on Wednesday, Feb. 25, for clues on whether the AI buildout is still accelerating — or simply getting more expensive.
