Shares in Amazon (AMZN) inventory closed Tuesday at $232.14, up 4% within the final 5 buying and selling classes. In the meantime, its Magnificent-7 inventory rival Alphabet (GOOGL) is up a modest 2% in that very same interval, closing Tuesday at $314. Whereas GOOGL took the magnificent-7 crown in 2025, the grouping has been quite a bit tighter collectively within the latter months of the yr, because of the AI race. All the grouping have closely invested in AI this yr, leading to big good points to investor curiosity. Whereas Amazon inventory has been a constant purchase this yr, it enters 2026 sitting barely behind Alphabet (GOOGL). Thankfully, that development has a stable likelihood of fixing subsequent yr.
YTD, AMZN is barely up 5%, however that’s largely as a result of poor Spring season that despatched most US shares plummeting. With its AI prospects booming and AWS cloud computing trying promising, Amazon has loads of potential in 2026. In consequence, there are various bullish inventory forecasts for AMZN. Certainly, present worth targets vary from $244 to $340, indicating potential upside from the present market worth of $232.
Truist Securities analyst Youssef Squali forecasts Amazon’s development at 10.5% in 2026, down from 12.1% in 2025, fueled by sturdy development elements and AI-driven companies. Amazon’s proposed cope with OpenAI might show a worthy catalyst to ship AMZN shares larger subsequent yr. Certainly, the e-commerce large is in talks with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, which hosts the world’s high AI platform ChatGPT, for a possible funding of $10 billion. The talks additionally point out that OpenAI might use Amazon’s in-house Trainium chips as a part of the supply. If the deal goes by means of, it could be a major breakthrough for Amazon’s comparatively younger semiconductor enterprise.
On the flip facet, loads of eyes have been on Alphabet (GOOGL) not too long ago, because of its in-house tensor processing items (TPU). A number of consultants predict that Alphabet’s TPUs might turn out to be a serious income driver that sends GOOGL inventory larger. These application-specific chips have lengthy been the spine of Google Cloud, and buyers are warming to the concept promoting them externally might be a profitable extension of that technique. Analysts level to latest momentum triggers, together with Alphabet’s dedication to provide tens of billions of {dollars} of TPUs to Anthropic and experiences that Meta could also be in talks to spend billions.
A lot of Amazon’s lackluster latest efficiency might be tied to the expansion of AWS, which trails that of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Nevertheless, Amazon noticed AWS income development speed up to twenty% final quarter, and the corporate stated it was capacity-constrained. As such, it’s boosting its capital expenditure (capex) funds to attempt to meet rising demand. This might imply a stable begin to the yr that can set the tempo for AMZN to catch as much as GOOGL within the AI race.
