Amazon (AMZN 1.47%) founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos implemented a corporate strategy that prioritizes obsessing over the customer and their wants and needs. This unique philosophy has resulted in one of the most successful enterprises of all time.
Investors have reaped the rewards. Had you purchased just $410 worth of this stock at its initial public offering (IPO) in 1997, you'd have $1 million today. But can Amazon be a millionaire-maker stock going forward?
Image source: Amazon.
Artificial intelligence and cloud computing
Amazon grew its reputation as an online store that started to sell almost everything. This segment, supported by a well-oiled logistics network, continues to be a key part of the company's success. Amazon is the second-biggest retailer on the face of the planet, behind only Walmart.
In the past decade, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has deservedly gotten a lot more attention. What was once an internal cloud computing project has now grown into an incredibly lucrative business. AWS reports strong double-digit revenue growth, with operating margin that typically exceeds 30%. It has a sticky customer base that has to deal with high switching costs. And AWS is the leader in the industry, with about one-third of the market share. From a financial perspective, AWS is critical to the Amazon empire.
And just in the last three or so years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been the major theme that the investment community is focused on the most, thanks to the rapid ascent of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Companies in all kinds of industries want to harness the power of AI to improve their competitive positions. AWS, which was already the dominant cloud computing platform, is now benefiting from heightened interest in AI.
"Start-ups, enterprises, and governments want to move their production workloads to the place that has the broadest and deepest array of capabilities," CEO Andy Jassy said on the Q3 2025 earnings call when talking about the value proposition of AWS.
NASDAQ: AMZN
Key Data Points
Can Amazon go to the moon?
Buying Amazon shares at the IPO in 1997 was probably viewed as an extremely risky investment decision with a very uncertain long-term outcome. The bold investors who held on over the decades have earned their massive returns.
Buying Amazon stock in 2026 is an action that rests on the opposite side of the risk spectrum. This is no longer a high-risk business to own. Amazon's success is more predictable.
Consequently, investors aren't staring at a potential 50-fold or 100-fold gain if they add the stock to their portfolios today. Amazon simply isn't going to grow at the same rate in the future that it did in the past, and a small investment won't make you a millionaire.
To be fair, though, at a forward price-to-earnings of 28.6, intelligent investors are considering buying shares.
