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Amazon (AMZN) Q1 FY26 earnings call: guidance and Q&A

Earnings call· Mar 2026 (Q1 FY26)· Consumer Discretionary· Apr 29, 2026

Source: earnings call transcript

Executive summary

Amazon Q1 FY26 — AWS reaccelerates to 28% as AI-infrastructure and custom silicon commitments surge

The quarter reframes Amazon as an AI-infrastructure compounder: AWS growth reaccelerated to its fastest pace in years while multi-gigawatt Trainium commitments and a leading custom-silicon franchise recast the CapEx surge as demand-backed rather than speculative. Management is explicit that heavy upfront spend pressures near-term free cash flow but expects attractive downstream ROIC, echoing the first AWS wave.

Highlights

5
  • Worldwide revenue $181.5B, up 17% YoY (15% ex-FX); operating income $23.9B at a record 13.1% operating margin

  • AWS revenue $37.6B, up 28% YoY (accelerated 480bps) — fastest growth in 15 quarters — on a $150B annualized run rate; AWS operating income $14.2B

  • Custom silicon business now >$20B annual run rate (~40% QoQ growth, triple-digit YoY); over $225B in Trainium revenue commitments and a $364B AWS backlog (excludes the >$100B Anthropic deal)

  • Advertising revenue $17.2B, up 22% YoY

  • Worldwide paid units grew 15% YoY (highest since COVID) while fulfillment costs grew slower — outbound shipping +12% and fulfillment expense +9% FX-neutral

Concerns

6
  • Cash CapEx of $43.2B in Q1; management flags that when CapEx growth outpaces revenue growth, near-term free cash flow is challenged until capacity is monetized

  • Memory and storage component costs have skyrocketed amid supply shortages, a watched risk for CapEx this year and next

  • Q2 North America to carry ~$1B YoY cost increase tied to Amazon Leo satellite manufacture/launch

  • Higher transportation costs from fuel inflation (partially offset by a new FBA fuel/logistics surcharge)

  • International segment operating margin only 3.6% vs North America 7.9%

  • Q2 includes a seasonal step-up in stock-based compensation expense

Guidance & targets

CategoryTargetConfidence
Q2 net sales
$194B-$199B
high materiality
High
Q2 operating income
$20B-$24B
high materiality
High
Q2 FX impact on net sales
~10 bps headwind
low materiality
Medium
Amazon Leo cost impact (North America)
~$1B YoY cost increase
medium materiality
High
Amazon Leo commercial service launch
On track to launch in Q3 2026
medium materiality
High
Trainium CapEx savings and margin advantage at scale
Tens of billions of CapEx savings each year; several hundred bps operating margin advantage vs third-party chips for inference
high materiality
Medium
AWS CapEx monetization and returns
High confidence CapEx will be monetized with compelling operating margins and ROIC; the faster AWS grows, the more short-term CapEx
high materiality
High
Selling Trainium racks to third parties
Good chance of selling racks over the next couple of years
medium materiality
Low
Whole Foods Market store expansion
100 more stores in the next few years
low materiality
Medium

Segment performance

SegmentRevenueYoYQoQMargin
AWS
Growth driven by both core and AI services; management cites strong correlation between AI spend and core-service demand as workloads move to production.
AWS annualized run rate: $150BAI revenue growth: triple digits YoYAWS backlog: $364B (excludes >$100B Anthropic deal)Fastest growth in 15 quarters
$37.6B28% (accelerated 480bps)+$2B QoQ (largest Q4-to-Q1 increase ever)$14.2B operating income
North America
Q2 to carry ~$1B YoY cost increase related to Amazon Leo; higher fuel-related transportation costs partially offset by new FBA surcharge.
Seasonal events (Big Spring Sale) performed wellStrong third-party seller sales growth, particularly U.S.
$104.1B12%—$8.3B operating income; 7.9% operating margin
International
Seller experience investments resonating; Prime Day shifts to Q3 for Australia, Brazil, India and Japan in FY26.
Strong 3P seller sales growth in Europe and Brazil (seller fees recently lowered)Amazon Now (India) orders +25% MoM
$39.8B11% (ex-FX)—$1.4B operating income; 3.6% operating margin

AMZN operating KPIs by quarter

AMZN operating KPIs stated on its earnings calls, by fiscal quarter
KPI Mar 2025 Q1 FY25 Jun 2025 Q2 FY25 Sep 2025 Q3 FY25 Dec 2025 Q4 FY25Change vs prior quarter
Third-party seller unit mix Worldwide
61% And worldwide third-party selling unit mix was 61% in Q1, consistent with Q1 of last year. Source: earnings call transcript
62% In Q2, worldwide third-party seller unit mix was 62%, the highest ever, up on 100 basis points from Q2 of last year. Source: earnings call transcript
62% And in Q3, worldwide third-party seller unit mix was 62%, up 200 basis points from Q3 of last year. Source: earnings call transcript
61% In Q4, Worldwide third-party seller unit mix was 61%. Source: earnings call transcript
-1 pt

Operating figures the company stated on at least two of the calls shown, checked against each call's transcript. Click a figure to read the sentence. A dash means it was not stated that quarter.

Product announcements

ProductTypeDetails
OpenAI models on Amazon Bedrocklaunch
Amazon Bedrock managed agents (powered by OpenAI)launch
Amazon Quick desktop applaunch
Health AI (with One Medical)launch
Sponsored Products and Brand Prompts in Rufuslaunch
Creative Agent (Amazon Ads)expansion
Amazon Leo commercial serviceroadmap
Next-generation robotics/automation in fulfillment centersexpansion

Deals & partnerships

Anthropic customer contract (Trainium commitment) over $100 billion multiyear, multi-gigawatt

One of two leading AI labs committing large multiyear multi-gigawatt Trainium commitments.

OpenAI partnership / customer contract multiyear, multi-gigawatt

Multi-gigawatt Trainium commitment; also co-invented Bedrock managed agents and made OpenAI models available on Bedrock.

Meta customer contract

Committed to using tens of millions of Graviton cores to run CPU-intensive agentic AI workloads.

Globalstar acquisition

Acquisition to obtain unusual/scarce global spectrum required for direct-to-device connectivity.

Apple partnership

Amazon Leo to power satellite services for iPhones and Apple Watches, enabled by the Globalstar relationship.

Delta Airlines customer contract starting 2028

Enterprise Leo commitment; latest of several signed before commercial launch.

Netflix partnership (advertising)

Amazon Audiences applies Amazon's shopping/browsing/streaming signals to Netflix viewers to improve advertiser performance.

Comcast Advertising partnership (advertising)

Expands local advertising to thousands of brands.

Uber partnership

Zoox will be available through the Uber app in Las Vegas and later Los Angeles; Uber also cited as a Trainium adopter.

Amazon Leo enterprise/government customers (JetBlue, AT&T, Vodafone, DIRECTV Latin America, Australia's NBN, DP World Tour, NASA) customer contracts

Roster of enterprises and governments with Leo revenue commitments prior to commercial service.

New AWS customers (U.S. Bank, Fox, Southwest Airlines, U.S. Army, Bloomberg, Cerebras, AT&T, Nokia, Fundamental, National Geographic Society, PGA TOUR, NVIDIA) customer contracts

New AWS agreements announced since the prior call, alongside OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta.

Risks & headwinds

Memory/storage component cost inflation and supply shortage This year and potentially next year

Cost of components, particularly memory, has 'skyrocketed'; not enough capacity for demand (no dollar figure given)

Mitigation:Secured significant supply early via strategic suppliers who prioritize largest (cloud) customers; management says not currently capacity-constrained and watching closely

Free cash flow pressure from CapEx outpacing revenue growth Near term / initial capacity tranches until monetized

Q1 cash CapEx $43.2B; early-year FCF 'challenged' during high-growth CapEx phase

Mitigation:Substantial portion of 2026 AWS CapEx already backed by customer commitments; long useful-life assets expected to yield attractive ROIC/FCF a couple of years after in service

Amazon Leo cost ramp Q2 FY26 (capitalizing certain costs from Q4)

~$1B YoY cost increase within North America in Q2

Mitigation:Costs to begin being capitalized in Q4 as commercial service launches in Q3

Higher transportation costs from fuel inflation Q2 FY26

Not quantified

Mitigation:Partially offset by recently implemented fuel and logistics-related FBA surcharge

Foreign exchange headwind Q2 FY26

~10 bps net-sales headwind in Q2 (Q1 FX was a $2.9B / 180bps favorable impact)

AI/chip capacity constraints and allocation trade-offs Ongoing

Trainium2 largely sold out; Trainium3 nearly fully subscribed; must allocate scarce Trainium between cloud demand and standalone rack sales

Mitigation:Ongoing capacity build-out; deep NVIDIA partnership maintained for customer choice

Seasonal stock-based compensation step-up Q2 FY26

Not quantified

Mitigation:Driven by timing of annual compensation cycle; reflected in Q2 operating income guidance

Q&A highlights

What levels of investment are needed to scale compute to meet the revenue backlog, and how does custom silicon position Amazon competitively?

Jassy reiterated no new update on capital — the plan is largely the same — but framed AI as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where every application gets reinvented. He tied AWS's unusual chip portfolio (Graviton CPU + Trainium AI) to being unusually well positioned, and expects to invest significant capital over coming years for long-term benefit.

“we do view this as truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where every application that we know of is going to be reinvented.”

asked by Eric Sheridan · answered by Andrew Jassy

4 min read 7 chapters

Detailed narrative

AWS reacceleration and the AI demand flywheel

AWS revenue reached $37.6B, up 28% YoY — an acceleration of 480bps and the fastest growth in 15 quarters — reaching a $150B annualized run rate and delivering $14.2B operating income. Growth was driven by both AI and core services, with management citing a strong correlation between AI spend and core-service demand as post-training, reinforcement learning and agentic tool usage pull heavily on both GPUs/accelerators and CPUs.

AI revenue is growing triple digits YoY. The Q1 AWS backlog stands at $364B, which explicitly excludes the recently announced >$100B Anthropic deal, and management stressed the backlog has reasonable breadth beyond one or two customers.

Custom silicon: Trainium and Graviton

Amazon's chips business grew ~40% QoQ and now runs at a >$20B annual revenue run rate with triple-digit YoY growth; management said if sold standalone the run rate would be ~$50B, making it one of the top 3 data center chip businesses in the world.

Trainium commitments now exceed $225B, with Trainium2 (~30% better price-performance than comparable GPUs) largely sold out, Trainium3 (30-40% better than T2, shipping since start of 2026) nearly fully subscribed, and much of Trainium4 (still ~18 months from broad availability) already reserved.

Graviton, up to 40% better price-performance than any x86, is used by 98% of the top 1,000 EC2 customers; Meta committed to tens of millions of Graviton cores.

Bedrock, agents and the OpenAI expansion

Bedrock inference customer spend grew 170% QoQ and processed more tokens in Q1 than all prior years combined; it is used by over 125,000 customers, with almost 80% of the Fortune 100. Amazon added OpenAI's GPT-5.4 to Bedrock (5.5 coming) and previewed Bedrock managed agents powered by OpenAI, a stateful runtime Jassy called the future of agent-building.

Turnkey agents (QRO, Transform, Connect, Quick) showed strong traction: QRO developers more than doubled QoQ with enterprise usage up ~10x, Transform saved over 1.56M manual hours, and new Quick customers grew more than 4x QoQ.

Stores, grocery and delivery speed

Worldwide paid units grew 15% YoY, the highest since the tail end of COVID lockdowns, with 600+ new notable brands added. Grocery surpassed $150B in gross sales in 2025, making Amazon the second-largest U.S. grocer, with same-day perishables in 2,300+ cities; perishable sales grew over 40x YoY and same-day perishable customers add ~3x as many items and spend 80%+ more.

Amazon expanded 1- and 3-hour delivery on 90,000+ items and grew ultra-fast Amazon Now (30 minutes) to tens of millions of customers across 9 countries. Average prices on Amazon.com decreased YoY.

Advertising and Prime Video profitability

Amazon Ads generated $17.2B, up 22% YoY, recognized by Forrester as a leader in omnichannel advertising. Amazon deepened its Netflix partnership via Amazon Audiences, partnered with Comcast Advertising for local advertising, and expanded interactive video ads starting with Samsung TVs.

Management explicitly stated Prime Video is now 'a large and profitable business in its own right,' a narrative-only profitability claim not broken out in the segment data. New AI ad tools (Creative Agent, Sponsored Products and Brand Prompts in Rufus) are early, with nearly 20% of shoppers interacting with Brand Prompts continuing the brand conversation.

Emerging bets: Zoox, Amazon Leo and devices

Zoox has driven nearly 2 million autonomous miles and carried more than 350,000 riders, is public in Las Vegas and San Francisco, testing in 8 other cities, and will be available via the Uber app in Las Vegas (LA later).

Amazon Leo has 250+ satellites in orbit with commercial service on track for Q3; it has meaningful enterprise/government revenue commitments (Delta, JetBlue, AT&T, Vodafone, DIRECTV Latin America, Australia's NBN, DP World Tour, NASA), plans to acquire Globalstar for direct-to-device spectrum, and struck an agreement with Apple to power iPhone/Apple Watch satellite services.

Alexa+ early access expanded internationally with users engaging materially more than Alexa classic.

CapEx, free cash flow and the investment thesis

Q1 cash CapEx was $43.2B, primarily AWS and generative AI. Jassy framed the spend as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, noting AWS must lay out cash for land, power, buildings, chips, servers and networking 6-24 months before billing customers. Assets carry long useful lives (30+ years for data centers, 5-6 years for chips/servers).

Management acknowledged that in high-growth periods where CapEx growth outpaces revenue growth, early-year free cash flow is challenged until initial capacity tranches are monetized — a cycle they say mirrors the first AWS growth wave, with much larger downstream revenue and FCF expected this time.

Summary of the company's earnings call; see how call summaries are prepared. Not investment advice.