AMZN: Amazon Stock Climbs 4% as Traders Ramp Up Bets on Anthropic as Revenue Stream

AI startup’s valuation soared last week to $183 billion, triple what it was worth back in March.

📈 Amazon Stock Breaks Higher

• Amazon stock AMZN jumped more than 4% Thursday, making it one of the S&P 500’s best-performing stocks of the day and helping lift the benchmark index to a fresh record high.
• Wall Street is increasingly bullish on Amazon’s deepening ties with Anthropic, the fast-growing AI startup that just last week closed another mega-funding round.
• Analysts see a significant revenue runway for Amazon Web Services (AWS) because Anthropic relies heavily on AWS infrastructure, including its Trainum and Inferentia chips, for model training and inference.

🚀 Anthropic’s $183B Valuation

• Anthropic, which develops the Claude AI models, closed a $13 billion funding round last week, sending its valuation soaring to $183 billion – triple what it was worth back in March.
• Backing such a giant solidifies AWS’s positioning in the generative AI arms race, strengthening Amazon’s competitive moat against rivals like Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud.
• Against this backdrop, traders are increasingly pricing in multiple future revenue streams for Amazon, with AWS + Anthropic viewed as the highest-growth lever in its portfolio.

💼 Amazon Still Lagging Behind Peers

• Thursday’s rally brings Amazon shares up more than 7% year-to-date, recovering from earlier weakness and rebounding nearly 10% over the past month.
• For the year, though, Amazon is one of the biggest laggards in the exclusive Magnificent Seven club. Its peers Nvidia NVDA, Meta META, and Microsoft MSFT are leading the pack with year-to-date gains of 25%, 24%, and 21%, respectively.
• Beyond AI tailwinds, Amazon is also riding momentum from expanding its same-day grocery delivery services and inking a key deal with JetBlue for its satellite-internet business Project Kuiper.

👀 What Wall Street’s Watching Next

• Back to the company’s cash cow. Investors are eyeing the third-quarter earnings report to see how much of Anthropic’s rapid scaling converts into meaningful top-line gains for Amazon. AWS is Amazon’s biggest profit maker.
• Further, analysts expect Amazon to double down on AI investments, expanding infrastructure to meet surging demand for Claude model training.
• Could 2025 be Amazon’s breakout year in AI? By supplying the infrastructure layer for a $183 billion AI startup (if that’s even the right term), Amazon is definitely well-positioned.