Amazon’s investment in artificial intelligence company Anthropic drove profits in the first three months of this year, even as Amazon continued to shell out billions of dollars for AI infrastructure.

Amazon’s profit grew 76% year over year, from $17.1 billion in the first three months of 2025 to $30.3 billion in the first three months of 2026, according to financial results released Wednesday.

Amazon’s revenue came in at $181.5 billion, beating analysts’ estimates.

This year’s first quarter income includes $16.8 billion in pretax gains from Amazon’s Anthropic investments.

Meanwhile, Amazon spent an additional $59.3 billion on property and equipment in the first quarter this year compared to its expenses in the same quarter last year. That increase primarily reflects investments in AI, Amazon said.

The company’s free cash flow decreased from $25.9 billion at the end of March 2025 to $1.2 billion at the end of this March.

Still, CEO Andy Jassy remained adamant that the company’s heavy investments would pay off.

“We’re making customers’ lives easier and better every day across all our businesses, and their response is driving significant growth,” Jassy said in a statement Wednesday. “We’re in the middle of some of the biggest inflection points of our lifetime, we’re well positioned to lead and I’m very optimistic about what’s ahead for our customers and Amazon.”

Amazon reported its first quarter results amid months of anxiety from Wall Street over the tech industry’s artificial intelligence spending spree. The company projects that it will pour $200 billion into capital expenditures this year, investments that are primarily focused on AI infrastructure.

As analysts look for signs of a return on that investment, they’re closely watching revenue growth from Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division. Amazon reported 28% growth in AWS revenue for the first three months of the year, reaching $37.6 billion.

AI spending and cloud revenue was under an especially bright spotlight on Wednesday as Amazon’s primary cloud competitors, Microsoft and Google, also reported earnings. The tech industry also went through a sell-off on Tuesday, following a Wall Street Journal report from earlier this week that said OpenAI was projected to miss its revenue goals.

Amazon has fared better recently than some of its competitors, though its stock price took a hit during the last earnings cycle three months ago after it projected higher capital expenditures than what Wall Street has estimated.

The company also went through another round of layoffs during the most recent quarter, which affected 16,000 employees. That was about three months after the company let go of about 14,000 workers. But unlike other tech companies, Amazon is not tying the workforce reduction to capital expenditure-related cost-cutting. Instead, the company says it is on a crusade against bureaucracy in an effort to keep its corporate structure nimble.

Amazon’s e-commerce unit continued to grow, though it didn’t gain as much as its cloud division. Net sales in North America increased 12% year-over-year to $104 billion and international sales increased 19% year-over-year to nearly $40 billion.

Amazon previously acknowledged the burden of rising fuel costs from the Iran war on its vast logistics network by raising fees on its third-party sellers who use the company’s fulfillment services.

It expects net sales will grow between 16%-19% in the second quarter this year, compared to the same time period in 2025.

Shortly after reporting its financial results, Amazon’s stock price dropped about 2%.

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