Amazon surges 15% in best single-day gain in 14 years as AWS AI boom rewrites the playbook

Amazon just added roughly $390 billion in market value in a single trading session. The 15.32% surge marks AMZN’s best single-day performance in 14 years, fueled by a Q2 2026 earnings report. The star of the show wasn’t e-commerce. It was AWS, and more specifically, the AI infrastructure gold rush powering it. The numbers behind the move AWS posted $42.2 billion in quarterly revenue, a 37% year-over-year jump that represents the cloud division’s strongest growth in over four years. Overall Amazon revenue hit $181.5 billion for the quarter, up 17% year-over-year, with record operating margins. AWS growth had already clocked in at 28% in Q1 2026, so the Q2 acceleration to 37% caught even optimistic analysts off guard. Amazon raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to roughly $200 billion, almost entirely driven by AI-related infrastructure demand. The earnings dropped on July 30, and reports noted intraday gains reaching as high as 12.99% before the stock ultimately closed up over 15%. Why crypto investors should care about a TradFi stock rally Amazon’s decision to spend $200 billion on capex this year is a capital allocation signal that echoes across every asset class. Eve...