Andy Jassy has said before that he thinks AWS can become a trillion-dollar revenue business. On Amazon's quarterly earnings call on Thursday 29 October, TechCrunch reports, he reaffirmed it, with a timeline and a spending figure attached.
Much of what follows is Jassy's own account of Amazon's prospects, as TechCrunch relayed it, and his growth and revenue targets are company forecasts, not results.
What Jassy said about the trillion-dollar target
"What we're building at Amazon is unlike anything that's ever been seen before," Jassy said, according to TechCrunch. "There has never been a business with a trillion dollars of annual revenue."
TechCrunch quotes him describing AWS as "a $184 billion annualized revenue run-rate business" and setting out the case for growth: "With our continued pace of innovation, new core and AI functionality, enterprises wanting to run their core and AI workloads in AWS, and the amount of capacity that we're adding each year, we believe that AWS can grow north of 40% in each 2027 and in 2028, and be a trillion-dollar revenue business in the next five to 10 years."
TechCrunch also reports that AWS revenue rose 39% from the year-ago quarter, which it describes as steady growth for the sixth straight quarter.
The spending that comes first
Jassy's pitch comes with a large bill. TechCrunch quotes him: "We still expect 2026 cash capex of approximately $220 billion — the majority for AWS — and expect to spend meaningfully more in 2027." He added that he saw a clear line of sight to the financial returns on that spending.
TechCrunch says Amazon's AI infrastructure spending has worried investors throughout this year, and that analysts on the call repeatedly asked Jassy to explain the spending, the signals that growth will arrive, and the profit margins to expect.
Asked why the investment was so substantial, Jassy, in TechCrunch's account, called the AI boom a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" that justified a large commitment now. He also said the company was "in the very early days" of enterprise AI adoption and that, so far, the "strategy is working."
"We're going to invest to continue being the leader," TechCrunch quoted him as saying. "We can fund this plan, and I think it will forever change the size of Amazon. It will forever change our revenue."
How investors reacted
Per TechCrunch, shares were down about 6% in after-market trading on Thursday, and investors remained concerned.
TechCrunch adds that Microsoft's cloud business has also grown rapidly, and that Microsoft, too, has spent heavily.
What this adds up to
A company that tells analysts it will spend about $220 billion this year and meaningfully more next is asking them to trust that the returns will follow. Jassy's answer is a growth forecast of north of 40% for two years and a five-to-10-year window for $1 trillion. Those are statements of intent from the person running the business. How the spending and the growth compare will show up in later quarters' reported figures, and this call settles neither.
Sources
Ropek, L. (2026) 'AWS will be a $1T business, Jassy says — but first, it will spend big', TechCrunch, 29 October 2026, available at: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/aws-will-be-a-1t-business-jassy-says-but-first-it-will-spend-big/ (Accessed: 30 October 2026).
Picture credits
- Top picture. Andy Jassy, photo by Lisi Mezistrano Wolf (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
- Amazon Spheres, Seattle campus, photo by Andy Li (CC0, Wikimedia Commons)
