Amazon Earned $30.3B in Q1 — $16.8B of It Was a Paper Gain on Anthropic
The Q1 headline beat is real. Amazon’s revenue hit $181.5B, up 17% year-over-year. AWS posted $37.6B at 28% growth — the fastest clip in 15 quarters and a $2B sequential increase from Q4, the largest Q4-to-Q1 jump in AWS history. Operating income reached $23.9B on a 13.1% operating margin, both company records.
Net income of $30.3B, however, requires a closer read. Amazon disclosed that $16.8B in pre-tax gains from its Anthropic investment — recorded as non-operating income — flowed directly into the bottom line for the quarter. Strip it out, and net income was roughly $13.5B, a more modest result consistent with the underlying operational trajectory. EPS of $2.78 beat the $1.62 analyst consensus by 71% precisely because nobody modelled a mid-quarter investment revaluation at that scale.
What the Balance Sheet Says
Amazon has committed $25B to Anthropic across multiple tranches. The Q1 gain reflects an upward mark-to-fair-value of that stake, triggered by Anthropic’s ongoing fundraising at elevated valuations. Marking the holding upward pulled $16.8B into the income statement — it is paper, not cash, and will reverse if Anthropic’s valuation moves the other direction.
Free cash flow tells the operational story. Capital expenditure ran at $43.5B+ in Q1 as Amazon builds the GPU infrastructure and data centres to support AWS AI demand. FCF was constrained as a result. That is a deliberate trade-off the company is making, and on the earnings call, management framed near-term FCF pressure as expected and acceptable given the demand backlog.
AWS Backlog: $364B Before the Anthropic Deal
On the earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy disclosed AWS committed backlog of $364B as of the end of Q1 — and then immediately flagged that this number explicitly excludes the recently announced deal with Anthropic for over $100B in AWS spend. Total committed future revenue is therefore closer to $464B+, not counting the 5GW Trainium chip supply agreement also announced in Q1.
That backlog, excluding the Anthropic line, grew from roughly $300B a year ago. The composition matters: Jassy noted breadth across customers, not concentration. AWS is not a single hyperscaler deal away from growth; it is a broadly distributed enterprise infrastructure bet.
Segment Performance
- AWS: $37.6B revenue, $14.2B operating income (37.7% margin), up from $11.5B in Q1 2025
- North America: $104.1B revenue, $8.3B operating income
- International: $39.8B revenue, $1.4B operating income
AWS operating margin expansion from 39.4% to 37.7% year-over-year reflects the cost of building out infrastructure ahead of demand. The revenue acceleration is absorbing the margin drag.
Key Numbers
| Metric | Q1 2026 | Q1 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Net sales | $181.5B | $155.7B |
| AWS revenue | $37.6B | $29.3B |
| Operating income | $23.9B | $18.4B |
| Net income | $30.3B | $17.1B |
| Anthropic gain (pre-tax) | $16.8B | — |
| EPS (diluted) | $2.78 | $1.59 |
AWS is now a $150B annualised run-rate business. The company that builds and controls the infrastructure Anthropic needs is also the company booking the largest paper gains from Anthropic’s rising valuation. Both sides of that relationship are getting larger.