New York, February 17, 2026, 10:04 (EST) — Regular session
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) slipped 0.9% to $196.98 Tuesday morning, after starting the session at $198.10. Shares moved between $200.31 and $196.52 before closing the previous session at $198.79.
U.S. stocks stumbled out of the gate following the long holiday, with investors questioning the pace and cost of Big Tech’s AI ambitions. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq slipped at the open, as market watchers kept an eye on U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations.
It’s cropping up in the positioning numbers as well. On Tuesday, Bank of America’s latest fund manager survey showed a record-high portion of respondents flagging what they see as excessive corporate spending, despite what it called “uber-bullish” sentiment. “AI bubbles” remains the biggest perceived tail risk, according to the poll. Reuters
Amazon finds itself in the thick of the conversation after forecasting roughly $200 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, a huge bet on AI infrastructure—think data centers and equipment. Analysts at MoffettNathanson flagged how this level of spending far outstripped expectations, stirring up old memories from the dot-com era when heavy investments didn’t always pay off quickly.
During the Feb. 5 earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy pushed back on doubts about AWS’s 24% expansion, saying that kind of growth is “very different” once you’re at Amazon’s scale. AWS revenue jumped to $35.6 billion in the December quarter. For comparison, Google Cloud was up 48%, while Microsoft Azure notched 39%. Amazon projected first-quarter operating income between $16.5 billion and $21.5 billion—coming up short of Wall Street’s $22.04 billion target. Dave Wagner of Aptus Capital Advisors noted the market “dislikes” the size of the capex spend needed to fuel those numbers. Reuters
The timing is a clear risk here. Should AI demand falter or clients push projects back, companies get slammed with depreciation costs from those new data centers immediately—while the revenue comes in later. That puts pressure on cash flow and tightens the margin for any missteps.
Right now, investors want to see whether that spending actually shows up in stronger cloud bookings, not just more ambitious buildouts. They’re also scanning for proof that AWS isn’t losing ground to Microsoft or Google, as the AI push stretches into everything from pricing and chip deals to raw capacity.
Nvidia’s quarterly earnings hit on Feb. 25, and that’s the next big test for sentiment—especially for anyone watching data-center demand and those giant AI hardware orders fueling the Amazon capex theme, plus the rest of the cloud pack.
