Amazon (AMZN 1.52%) has a market capitalization of $2.3 trillion, and its share price has moved 44% higher over the last five years. While the company's valuation still managed to march higher over the last half-decade, the cloud-computing and e-commerce giant has the unenviable distinction of being one of only two "Magnificent Seven" companies to underperform the S&P 500's level increase of roughly 80% over the stretch.
Microsoft is the only other Mag 7 stock to lag behind the benchmark index, and its share-price gain of roughly 78% over the period is just slightly behind the index's. Meanwhile, Nvidia's stock has rocketed 1,330% higher over the last five years. The tech company's leadership position in advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) used for artificial intelligence (AI) processes has allowed its stock to post incredible gains.
The rise of AI has also played a huge role in powering market-beating gains for most Magnificent Seven stocks.
Image source: Getty Images.
With many top tech companies seeing strong sales and earnings growth connected to AI, Amazon stock's relative underperformance stands out in a big way. On the other hand, there are good reasons to bet against the stock continuing to be a laggard.
Read on to see why Amazon has the potential to surge 74% and join Nvidia in the $4 trillion club.
Amazon is likely just starting to benefit from AI
In 2025, Amazon posted sales of $716.9 billion and surpassed Walmart to become the world's largest company by revenue. While Amazon generates profit margins that are significantly better than Walmart's, its levels of net income generation relative to revenue come in much lower than most companies in the Magnificent Seven. The reason for the margin disparity compared to other tech leaders is that Amazon still generates most of its revenue from its e-commerce business, and online retail is a highly cost-intensive business.
NASDAQ: AMZN
Key Data Points
While the much higher margin Amazon Web Services segment accounted for just 18% of total revenue last year, it accounted for $45.6 billion of the company's total of $80 billion in operating income. The company's Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure segment has already seen sales growth supported by rising AI demand and should continue to power earnings growth, but there could be even better news for investors.
Amazon will likely be able to achieve much better margins on its e-commerce business thanks to the evolution of AI and robotics technologies. In addition to warehouse automation, the company will have opportunities to leverage autonomous driving and other delivery-related technologies to further reduce operating expenses.
As the world's largest company by revenue, Amazon's massive sales base provides the potential for huge earnings growth in conjunction with cost reductions and margin improvements. While it's highly unlikely that the e-commerce business will ever record margins that come close to what AWS is delivering, betting on meaningful margin improvements for online retail operations from AI and robotics over the next five years actually looks like a fairly safe bet. The company is investing heavily right now to build out the necessary infrastructure, but the market could quickly re-rate Amazon and put it on a path to a $4 trillion market cap when significant margin improvements start to materialize.
