Amazon’s Trillion-Dollar Capex Gamble vs Shopify’s Lean Profitability

Quick Read

• Amazon’s AWS hit its fastest cloud growth in 15 quarters while Shopify’s GMV crossed $100B for the first time, with both stocks beating Q1 revenue estimates.

• Amazon poured $44B into Q1 capex while Shopify spent just $5M, generating $476M in free cash flow instead.

• Amazon’s P/E of 31 versus Shopify’s 121 makes Amazon the cheaper AI infrastructure bet, though Shopify’s 34% revenue growth runs considerably hotter.

• Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Amazon didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP) sit on opposite sides of the same retail transaction.

Amazon owns the storefront, warehouse, and increasingly the cloud powering everyone else. Shopify arms independent merchants competing against it. Both posted Q1 2026 results beating revenue expectations, and the contrast reveals where commerce and AI money is flowing.

AWS Reaccelerates While Shopify Crosses $100B in GMV

Amazon reported $181.519 billion in revenue, up 16.61%, with EPS of $2.78 against a $1.653 estimate. AWS drove the headline, hitting $37.587 billion in cloud revenue, up 28%, the fastest pace in 15 quarters.

Andy Jassy told investors the chips business (Trainium, Graviton, Nitro) crossed a “$20 billion revenue run rate (growing triple digits year-over-year)”. Advertising cleared $70 billion trailing twelve months, a real second engine.

Shopify reported $3.17 billion in revenue, but growth ran hotter at 34.32%, accelerating from 27% in Q1 2025. Merchant Solutions grew 39% to $2.42 billion. GMV crossed $100.74 billion for the quarter for the first time, up 35%.

Operating income nearly doubled to $382 million, though a $941 million mark-to-market equity hit pushed GAAP net income to negative $581 million. Underlying profit was $360 million.

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One Builds the AI Backbone, the Other Arms Merchants

Amazon is spending like a utility. Q1 capex was $44.203 billion, up 76.68%. Anthropic committed to up to 5 GW of Trainium capacity, OpenAI to roughly 2 GW. Polymarket traders assign a 98.5% probability that Amazon 2026 capex exceeds $170B, and 86.5% above $200B. That is a substantial bill for AWS to justify.

Shopify took the opposite approach: capex of $5 million, free cash flow of $476 million, and $491 million in buybacks under a fresh $2 billion program. Merchant lending originations hit $1.349 billion, turning Shop Capital into a real financial services line.