Stock Market Today, April 9: Amazon Surges After CEO Details AI and AWS Growth Plans
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), global e-commerce and cloud leader, closed Thursday at $233.65, up 5.60%. Shares moved higher after CEO Andy Jassy’s shareholder letter detailed Amazon’s AI, AWS, and chip ambitions. Investors will now be focusing on how aggressive AI infrastructure spending translates into future AWS and chip revenue growth.
Trading volume reached 64.9 million shares, coming in about 30% above its three-month average of 50.1 million shares. Amazon IPO'd in 1997 and has grown 238,520% since going public.
How the markets moved today
The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) added 0.61% to finish Thursday at 6,824, while the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) advanced 0.83% to close at 22,822. Within internet retail, peers Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) closed at $127.68 (+1.88%) and MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI) ended at $1,793.2 (+0.98%), posting more modest gains than Amazon’s AI-fueled rally.
What this means for investors
Investors have been shocked at how capital spending plans for building out AI infrastructure have soared this year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sought to convince stakeholders that the company will prove those are good investments in his annual shareholder letter.
Jassy revealed for the first time that the company is already seeing a $15 billion revenue run rate from AI services at its AWS cloud-computing unit. He added, “We're not investing approximately $200 billion...on a hunch. Of the AWS capex we expect to spend in 2026, much of which will be monetized in 2027-2028, we already have customer commitments for a substantial portion of it."
That convinced enough investors to bid shares up more than 5% today.
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Howard Smith has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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