2025 has been an incredible year for the world's most valuable companies. Nvidia became the first $4 trillion stock in July, and it has already surpassed $5 trillion, while Apple and Microsoft recently hit the $4 trillion mark.
Alphabet is the only other stock above $3 trillion in value, and Amazon (AMZN +0.56%) is not too far behind, with nearly $2.7 trillion in market cap, as of this writing.
The market has been sour on Amazon stock for most of the year, but Amazon got an enthusiastic reaction to its third-quarter earnings report, and while it's still trailing the market this year, it's finally gaining momentum. It's quite probable at this point that Amazon will join the $3 trillion market cap club, which implies only a 12% gain, next year.
Here are three reasons why.
Image source: Amazon.
1. Acceleration in AWS
Part of why Amazon has underwhelmed this year is a slowdown in Amazon Web Services (AWS) at the same time that its cloud services competitors climb higher. Management has maintained that it has the largest and most complete assortment of services for its clients, and it has pointed out that it's still winning in adding dollar amounts, since the percentage growth is over a much wider base than its rivals.
It also reassured investors that there's a lot more coming, and it's constantly innovating to grab market share and keep its lead; AWS controls about 30% of the global market for cloud services. That's a substantial lead, although its competitors aren't too far behind.
The market finally got a taste of that in the third quarter, when Amazon reported a 20% year-over-year increase in AWS sales. Here's what it's looked like over the past four quarters:
| Metric | Q3 25 | Q2 25 | Q1 25 | Q4 24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS sales growth | 20% | 17.5% | 17% | 19% |
Data source: Amazon quarterly reports.
The acceleration in sales growth, on top of the wider base, is an impressive feat and implies that clients see it as having more to offer than other providers.
2. Advances in AI
AWS is where the artificial intelligence (AI) business happens. AWS clients can engage with Amazon's AI platform, creating all sorts of AI apps at multiple price points and customization options.
Management gave a slew of recent AI updates as it tries to be everything to everyone in AI. Some of its solutions include SageMaker, a platform for developers to create their own large-language model for complete customization, as well as Bedrock, a platform that offers developers the use of other LLMs, like Claude and Nova, to design AI apps. The company recently launched AgentCore, a model for building scalable AI agents, Kiro, a program for agent coding, and Transform, a migration tool. Management noted that AWS gets most of the government and large enterprise migrations.
All of these services are being used by hundreds of thousands of clients, and Amazon continues to roll out new ones as it gains insight into its customers' needs.
To meet unrelenting demand and position itself for more, it's expanding its available power. It added 3.8 gigawatts of power over the past year, which includes chips and data centers, more than any other cloud company. It plans to double that by 2027, including adding another gigawatt over the next year.
The AI business already has a $132 billion run rate, and as that increases, it adds important revenue to the company's total. That makes it a shoe-in for improving market sentiment.
NASDAQ: AMZN
Key Data Points
3. Improvements in e-commerce
Let's not forget that e-commerce is still Amazon's main game, and it represented $110 billion of revenue in the third quarter, or nearly two-thirds of the total.
There are two primary ways Amazon is improving its value proposition: a better selection of products and improved delivery speed. It has been adding more products from popular brand names like The North Face and Charlotte Tilbury, and it had 14% more products available in its marketplace than last year in the third quarter.
It offers fresh, same-day grocery delivery now in 1,000 locations, and it plans to be in 2,300 locations by the end of the year. It also just launched a new button to add items to deliveries that are already scheduled, and it's already been used 80 million times. These are the kinds of upgrades that create loyalty and generate higher sales and customer satisfaction.
Although these are three great reasons separately, part of what makes Amazon such a great stock to own is that it has diverse businesses, which means it can handle risk better. That's another reason Amazon stock looks like a buy today.
