Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) reported first-quarter 2026 net sales of $181.5 billion, a 17% increase from $155.7 billion in the same period a year earlier, as its cloud division posted the highest growth rate in 15 quarters.
Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing segment, recorded $37.6 billion in revenue during the quarter, up 28% year-over-year. The result represents an acceleration from the 17% growth AWS reported in Q1 2025 and the 24% rate in Q4 2025. Cloud infrastructure spending has remained resilient in 2025 and into 2026, driven in part by enterprise demand for AI workloads, according to analyst reports tracking the sector. AWS competes primarily with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in global cloud infrastructure.
#AWS Logs Its Fastest Revenue Growth Since Q2 2022
AWS operating income reached $14.2 billion in the quarter, up from $11.5 billion in Q1 2025, with an operating margin of 37.7%. The segment accounted for $37.6 billion of the company's total $181.5 billion in net sales for the quarter.
Amazon also reported that it processed more tokens on Bedrock, its managed AI model service, in the first quarter than in all prior years combined. Customer spend on Bedrock grew 170% quarter-over-quarter, the company stated.
#Net Income Rises to $30.3 Billion, Boosted by Anthropic Investment Gains
Consolidated net income for the quarter reached $30.3 billion, or $2.78 per diluted share, compared with $17.1 billion, or $1.59 per diluted share, in Q1 2025. The company noted that Q1 2026 net income includes $16.8 billion in pre-tax gains from non-operating income related to its investment in Anthropic, the AI safety company in which Amazon has a strategic stake.
Excluding the Anthropic-related gains, net income from operations was materially lower. Operating income for the quarter was $23.9 billion, compared with $18.4 billion in Q1 2025, representing a 30% increase.
"AWS is growing 28% (our fastest growth in 15 quarters) on a very large base" said Andy Jassy, President and CEO, Amazon, in the earnings release. Jassy also noted that the company's chips business exceeded a $20 billion annual revenue run rate, growing triple-digit percentages year-over-year.
#Stores Unit Growth Reaches Highest Rate Since Covid Lockdowns; Free Cash Flow Falls
North America segment sales rose 12% year-over-year to $104.1 billion. International segment sales increased 19% to $39.8 billion, or 11% excluding foreign exchange effects.
Worldwide paid unit growth in Amazon's Stores segment reached 15% year-over-year, which the company described as the highest rate since the tail end of covid lockdowns.
Operating cash flow for the trailing twelve months increased 30% to $148.5 billion. Free cash flow, however, declined to $1.2 billion for the same period, down from $25.9 billion for the twelve months ended March 31, 2025. The company attributed the decrease to a $59.3 billion year-over-year increase in capital expenditures, primarily reflecting investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
For Q2 2026, Amazon projected net sales between $194.0 billion and $199.0 billion, representing growth of 16% to 19% year-over-year. The company projected Q2 operating income between $20.0 billion and $24.0 billion, compared with $19.2 billion in Q2 2025. Amazon stated that the Q2 outlook assumes Prime Day occurs in the second quarter.
Those projections are subject to uncertainty. The company cited foreign exchange rate fluctuations, tariff and trade policy changes, energy price volatility, recessionary conditions, and geopolitical developments as factors that could materially affect results. The scale of Amazon's AI infrastructure build-out also creates execution and supply-chain dependencies, including on memory chip availability, that could affect both costs and timelines.