Amazon posted a $62.6 billion profit for the second quarter of 2026, crushing Wall Street expectations and offering a vivid snapshot of where the company's money is coming from now: cloud computing, advertising, and artificial intelligence.

The April-to-June quarter brought in $200.6 billion in total revenue, beating analyst estimates of $196.43 billion, according to Variety. Diluted earnings per share landed at $5.75 — more than triple the $1.82 analysts had expected. That profit figure includes the value of Amazon's stake in Anthropic, the AI startup it has backed heavily.

Amazon had guided investors to expect $194 billion to $199 billion in Q2 revenue when it reported its first-quarter results in April. The actual number sailed past the top of that range.

The advertising business grew 26% year-over-year. That matters because ad revenue has become one of Amazon's most closely watched growth engines — the money brands pay to place products in front of shoppers on Amazon's storefront and across its streaming properties. Prime Video, which started showing ads by default in several markets in 2024, sits squarely inside that machine.

Amazon Web Services, the cloud division that rents computing power to other companies, grew 36.7% year-over-year — its fastest pace in 18 quarters, per Variety. AWS is where much of the AI boom translates into actual revenue, because companies training and running AI models need enormous amounts of computing infrastructure. Amazon said its AI business and its custom chips business each surpassed annualized run rates of more than $25 billion — meaning at their current pace, each is on track to bring in more than $25 billion over a full year.

On the logistics side, Amazon reported record delivery speeds for Prime members in the first half of 2026, with over 40% more items delivered same-day or overnight compared with the same period a year earlier.

The earnings call was webcast live on Thursday, July 30, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. PT, as scheduled.

The days leading up to the report carried their own flurry of Amazon announcements. On July 29, STARZ and the anime streamer Crunchyroll unveiled a new US streaming bundle available through Prime Video Channels — the add-on subscription marketplace that lets Prime members stack extra services onto their existing account. On July 28, the AI firm Recursive signed a $410 million multi-year deal with AWS. The airline Ryanair extended its own AWS agreement for another five years on July 27.

What stands out in these numbers is how many different engines are firing at once. The retail side delivered faster. The cloud side grew at its quickest clip in four and a half years. Advertising kept climbing at a double-digit rate. And the AI investments — both the Anthropic stake and the in-house chips and services — are now producing revenue lines large enough to report separately.

For anyone watching Amazon's streaming and entertainment bets, the advertising growth is the thread to follow. Ad-supported streaming tiers have reshaped how platforms earn money, and Amazon's ad revenue now reflects both its storefront and whatever Prime Video contributes to the total. The company does not break out a Prime Video-only ad figure in these earnings, but the 26% growth rate covers the entire advertising business.