Amazon's plan to spend about $200 billion in 2026 shows how AI capex spreads beyond GPUs into custom chips, data centers, robotics, networking, and satellite infrastructure while compressing free cash flow in the near term.
Amazon's initial commitment of up to $4 billion to Anthropic paired minority ownership with AWS distribution, Trainium and Inferentia adoption, and a preferred-cloud relationship. The capital was designed to strengthen both Claude and Amazon's AI infrastructure.
AWS converted years of Amazon infrastructure investment into rentable storage and compute, changing software capital formation by letting developers buy capacity as an operating expense.
Amazon survived its earliest years by moving from Bezos family capital to angels, Kleiner Perkins venture funding, and finally public markets.