Amazon: A Deeper Look at the Cloud Growth Story (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) brought in a jaw-dropping $182 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2026. While the majority of this sum came from its retail operations, the market undoubtedly spends more time focused on the company's cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This isn't surprising. AWS posted a 28% year-over-year revenue gain in Q1, its fastest growth pace in more than three years. And AWS' operating income accounts for 59% of the overall company's total. These are impressive trends.

But investors should take a deeper look at the AWS growth story.

Image source: Amazon.

Double-click on the backlog metric

Andy Jassy, who has been CEO of Amazon since taking over from founder Jeff Bezos in July 2021, highlighted the huge opportunity that the cloud segment is facing. As he wrote in his 2025 shareholder letter, "85% of global IT spend remains on-premises."

In recent years, the artificial intelligence (AI) market has taken a central position in the financial picture. "Our AI revenue is growing triple digits year over year," Chief Financial Officer Brian T. Olsavsky said on the Q1 earnings call. It's hard not to be bullish about the company after reading this.

The market places a lot of attention on a single metric for cloud computing leaders like Amazon: backlog, which indicates contracted (but not yet delivered) demand from customers. AWS had a $364 billion backlog as of March 31, up 49% from three months before.

And that figure didn't include the 10-year $100 billion deal with Anthropic signed in April. But it did include OpenAI's $138 billion spending commitment over the next eight years. These are the two most prominent AI labs out there, and both are weighing initial public offerings that would value the companies at more than $1 trillion.

The outlook for AWS is highly reliant on the ability of these two start-ups to fulfill their spending commitments. This puts its backlog on shakier ground.

As of May, Anthropic and OpenAI had a combined annualized revenue run rate of $72 billion. Their total yearly spending commitment to AWS of about $27 billion amounts to 38% of this sales figure. This isn't a cause for concern at first glance.

However, this doesn't count their spending obligations with other cloud providers, measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It also excludes operating expenses and the need to eventually produce a profit. There is tremendous uncertainty in the coming years, all dependent upon the ability of Anthropic and OpenAI to register skyrocketing revenues and build durable business models.

Say goodbye to free cash flow

Amazon has said it will lay out $200 billion on capital expenditures this year, up 52% compared to 2025. The company will burn $11 billion in free cash flow in 2026, according to analysts' consensus estimates. Investors have to get used to this new financial reality.

On a positive note, Amazon has historically excelled at choosing where to invest with an eye toward the long term. Additionally, the sizable investments it's making could also benefit the overall business. The online marketplace, logistics network, Prime Video, and advertising segment, for example, are all leveraging its expanded AI capabilities.

Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.