Amazon (AMZN): AWS is 18% of revenue and 57% of the profit — and Anthropic is inflating the rest

Amazon sold $716.9 billion worth of goods and services in 2025, 12.4% more than in 2024, and earned $80.0 billion of operating profit. At the Oct 2, 2026 close of $251.52 the company was worth $2.71 trillion. Jeff Bezos founded it in 1994; it started selling on its website in July 1995, and its stated mission is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Andy Jassy, who ran AWS from 2006 to 2021, has been chief executive since July 2021, with Bezos as executive chair.

Revenue: mostly retail

Profit: mostly AWS

The segment numbers change the picture. North America (stores, ads and subscriptions) earned $29.6 billion on $426.3 billion of revenue, a 6.9% margin. International earned $4.8 billion on $161.9 billion, 2.9%. AWS earned $45.6 billion on $128.7 billion, a 35.4% margin. In other words, the cloud business was 18% of revenue and 57% of operating profit.

The two fastest-growing lines in the first half of 2026 were the most profitable ones: AWS revenue grew 32.7% and advertising 25.1%. By customer location, the United States accounted for 68.3% of 2025 revenue, followed by Germany (6.4%), the United Kingdom (6.0%) and Japan (4.3%).

Why the P/E of 20 is misleading

Amazon’s net income for the first half of 2026 was $92.9 billion — more than its net income for all of 2025. Most of the difference is not operations. Before taxes, $69.1 billion came from non-operating gains, mainly from revaluing its stake in Anthropic, the AI company in which it invested $8.0 billion between 2023 and 2025 and another $5.0 billion in 2026. That gain is an accounting revaluation; no cash came in. Operating profit in the same half was $51.3 billion, up 36.6%.

Over twelve months that is $135.3 billion of net income, $80.4 billion of non-operating gains (pre-tax) and $93.7 billion of operating profit. On reported earnings the stock trades at about 20 times; on operating profit, the market value is 29 times. The second number describes the business; the first describes the business plus a mark-up on a private company.

Amazon’s profit history has other swings that were not about operations. In 2021 it gained $11.8 billion on its stake in Rivian, and in 2022 it lost $12.7 billion on the same stake — which is why 2022 shows a net loss of $2.7 billion even though operating profit was positive, at $12.2 billion. 2025 included a $15.2 billion investment gain, mostly Anthropic, and a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC.

Three decades of deals

• IPO on May 15, 1997, at $18.00 a share. Four splits — 2-for-1 in 1998, 3-for-1 and 2-for-1 in 1999, and 20-for-1 in 2022 — turned each IPO share into 240.
• 2003: the first profitable year since the IPO, with $35 million of net income on $5.3 billion of sales.
• 2006: already selling cloud services to developers, such as S3 storage and EC2 computing.
• Zappos (2009, paid in Amazon shares), Twitch (2014, about $842 million), Whole Foods Market (2017, about $13.2 billion), MGM (2022, about $6.1 billion plus $2.5 billion of debt) and One Medical (2023, about $3.5 billion).
• February 2026: a partnership with OpenAI in which Amazon will invest up to $50 billion — $28.7 billion had been invested by June 30, 2026 — while OpenAI expands its AWS contract by $100 billion over eight years.
• April 2026: an agreement to buy satellite operator Globalstar for about $10.9 billion including debt, expected to close in 2027.

Amazon has never paid a dividend. $1,000 invested at the IPO price would have been 13,333 shares after the splits, worth about $3.35 million at the Oct 2, 2026 close. The first day’s close was $23.50 before splits, so an open-market buyer that day would have about 23% less.

What Jeff Bezos sold — and what he did not

In the twelve months to October 2, 2026, Amazon insiders bought no shares, and every sale — $456.7 million in total — was made under pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans. Jeff Bezos accounted for $346.5 million of that, Andy Jassy for $35.4 million and Doug Herrington for $31.5 million.

Bezos sold once in that period: 1,209,649 shares on August 3, 2026, at an average of $286.41. On the same day he filed a Form 144 notice covering up to 15 million shares — about $4.07 billion at the notice’s price — under a plan adopted in November 2025. By October 2, only the 1.2 million had been sold, so “Bezos filed to sell up to 15 million shares” is accurate and “Bezos sold $4 billion” is not. He also gave away 2.73 million shares in the period, and after his last Form 4 he still held 879.3 million shares directly, about 8.2% of the company.

Who owns it

Twenty-three of the 38 managers this site tracks held Amazon at the end of June 2026. The largest among them is Baillie Gifford, with 26.9 million shares worth $6.4 billion — after trimming its position in each of the last eleven quarters from a peak of 41.3 million shares in late 2023. In the second quarter, Philippe Laffont, Ken Griffin, Andreas Halvorsen and Cliff Asness added the most, while Bill Ackman cut his stake by 25%. Those values are at the June 30 price of $238.34.

These figures describe the past and are not investment advice. The Amazon page has the same data, updated daily.