New York, Feb 18, 2026, 17:17 EST — Trading after the bell.
Amazon.com climbed 1.8% to $204.79 in Wednesday’s after-hours trade, with shares getting a lift as the tech sector steadied following earlier jitters tied to artificial intelligence spending.
Megacap stocks climbed late after Nvidia surged, buoyed by news of a multi-year agreement to supply millions of AI chips to Meta Platforms. Traders also sifted through the latest Federal Reserve minutes, searching for new signals on interest rates. “Weakness in tech was bound to bring in the marginal buyer,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird. Reuters
While investors weighed whether the “AI trade” had regained momentum, Berkshire Hathaway’s latest Form 13F landed—a surprise: the firm held just 2.276 million Amazon shares at the end of 2025, a steep drop from the 10.0 million reported in the previous quarter. (A Form 13F, required from major money managers, offers a backward-looking quarterly breakdown of U.S.-listed stocks.) SEC
Amazon logged a minor insider move as well. Director Keith B. Alexander sold 900 shares at $203.88 each on Feb. 12, according to a Form 4. The sale was made through a Rule 10b5-1 plan.
The stock is still reacting to uncertainties Amazon flagged earlier this month. In its Feb. 5 earnings report, the company posted AWS fourth-quarter sales of $35.6 billion, up 24%. CEO Andy Jassy put the spotlight on spending, stating, “we expect to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures across Amazon in 2026,” a figure keeping cash-flow calculations in sharp focus. Amazon projected first-quarter net sales between $173.5 billion and $178.5 billion. SEC
Signs of discomfort around that spending are easy to spot. “While the rising capital intensity is not a surprise directionally, the magnitude of the spend is materially greater than consensus expected,” analysts at MoffettNathanson wrote earlier this month, following Amazon’s update on its 2026 plans. Capital expenditures—capex—cover costly items like data centers, servers and chips. Reuters
Financing is back in focus. UBS has bumped up its 2026 outlook for U.S. tech investment grade bond issuance, highlighting bigger capex plans at giants like Amazon and Alphabet. The bank noted that Alphabet’s latest CHF and GBP deals suggest U.S. tech names are still tapping international markets for capex funding.
Amazon’s near-term question is blunt and a bit tangled: will AWS and ad revenue ramp up fast enough to cover the rising spend, or will investors balk at the costs? Microsoft and Alphabet offer the cleanest cloud comparisons, though the market seems to be weighing every company’s capex story on its own terms.
This downside scenario isn’t new. Should it take AI infrastructure more time to show up in actual revenue—or if rivals ratchet up the pressure on cloud pricing—rising costs could put the squeeze on free cash flow, undermining the valuation floor. That risk only grows if anticipated rate cuts fade and bond yields start climbing again.
Now, attention turns to the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting set for March 17–18. That’s where traders hope to get a firmer sense of what’s ahead for rates—a factor that’s been steering appetite for risk in the biggest tech names day after day.
