Amazon snaps 9-day losing streak when it shed over $450B in value
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks to CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 20, 2026.
CNBC
Amazon Shares closed up more than 1% on Tuesday, snapping a nine-day slide that reduced market value by billions of dollars.
The stock lost nearly 18% of its value between Feb. 2 and Friday, marking its worst losing streak since 2006 and wiping out more than $450 billion in market valuation as investors questioned the merits of AI spending plans.
The selling frenzy on Amazon is tied to the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report released earlier this month.
Amazon said it expects to spend $200 billion on capital expenditures this year, up nearly 60% from last year and more than $50 billion above Wall Street’s forecast. Most of the spending is expected to go to AI-related initiatives that require more infrastructure such as data centers, chips and networking equipment.
Amazon one day stock chart.
Investors have become increasingly concerned about tech companies’ large AI investments and their potential to reduce or wipe out their free cash flow.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Amazon’s capital spending could reach $700 billion this year as companies race to build more infrastructure.
Shares of Alphabet and Microsoft lost more than 1% on Tuesday, while shares of Meta closed down less than one percent. Microsoft and Alphabet shares recorded their fifth consecutive negative session.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy defended the company’s big spending, telling analysts on a conference call that he was confident it would “generate strong returns on invested capital.”
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman also tried to justify the spending increase in an interview with CNBC last week, saying the capex increase would allow the company to capture AI opportunities in the cloud.
Wedbush analysts wrote in a research note following Amazon’s fourth-quarter report that the company is now in “prove mode” to show investors it can generate returns on capital expenditures.
“The increase in spending will continue to be an overhang as investors digest the guidance, and they will likely need to see more tangible returns before regaining comfort,” the analysts wrote. The firm has an outperform rating on Amazon shares.
Citizens managing director and research analyst Andrew Boone told CNBC on Tuesday that he remains “bullish” on AWS despite the recent sell-off.
He noted Jassy’s comment that Amazon expects to double its data center capacity by 2027 as an “underappreciated” growth driver in its cloud business.
“As more capacity comes online, we think that will lead to an acceleration in terms of AWS revenue,” Boone said in an interview on CNBC’s “The Exchange.”
— CNBC’s Nick Wells contributed to this report.
