Amazon had a very big week that could shape where its stagnant stock goes next

CNBC Finance

5 min read

Amazon made plenty of news this week â from advances in the cloud business to questions about its partnership with the U.S. Postal Service â leaving investors with a lot to digest. The flurry of headlines comes at the end of a challenging year. The e-commerce and cloud giant's stock is up 4.6%, compared to the broad market S & P 500's 16.4%, and well behind all of its Magnificent Seven peers. Despite the company showing reaccelerating growth in AWS and enhancements to its dominant Prime e-commerce ecosystem, investors remain concerned that it is losing ground in the AI race and could face margin pressure from tariffs. We believe the company has turned a corner. "A better year is ahead as management continues to prove out its AI strategy and expand operating margins," Jeff Marks, portfolio director for Club, wrote in a report on Thursday, highlighting stocks that are set up for a bounce back in 2026. Here's how this week's news fits into that investment thesis: Upbeat updates at cloud event News: During Amazon 's annual re:Invent 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman unveiled Trainium3 , the latest version of the company's in-house custom chip. It delivers four times the compute performance, energy efficiency, and memory bandwidth of previous generations.Â AWS also announced that it is already working on Trainium4. The company also revealed a series of cloud products, including advanced AI-driven platforms and agents that help customers automate workloads. Our take: We were pleased to hear that AWS continues to innovate its chip offerings to diversify its reliance on Nvidia , the industry leader in graphics processing units (GPUs). However, most of the investor focus is on bringing data center capacity online. Amazon needs to buy more Nvidia chips to catch up in AI. Also, Jim Cramer interviewed AWS CEO Matt Garman on "Mad Money" earlier this week, who was upbeat about the future growth of the cloud business. USPS ties tested News: According to a Washington Post report, Amazon could sever its relationship with the USPS when its contract expires in October 2026. Amazon likely considered the move, as it already has a shadow postal service, Amazon Logistics, that handles billions of packages annually. By removing USPS as the middleman, Amazon would have complete financial and operational control. Amazon refuted the report . Our take: For years, the e-commerce and cloud giant invested billions of dollars to build a vast logistics network that is now delivering more packages in the U.S. than UPS and FedEx . It still uses the USPS for delivery of small, low-weight packages, especially those from third-party Amazon sellers. USPS is also helpful for "last-mile delivery" in difficult-to-serve geographic areas. If the company were to eliminate the Postal Service as a middleman, it could further reduce its cost to serve, thereby improving margins. Possible IPO payday News: Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, is reportedly in talks to launch one of the biggest IPOs ever in early 2026, according to the Financial Times. Anthropic responded that it had no immediate plans for an IPO and instead is "keeping our options open," Anthropic chief communications officer Sasha de Marigny said at an Axios event in New York City on Thursday. Our take: An Anthropic public offering could be a massive payday for Amazon, which has invested about $8 billion in Anthropic. As part of that investment, Anthropic partnered with AWS as its primary cloud provider and training partner to run its massive AI training and inference workloads. An Anthropic IPO would elevate the AI startup and thereby enhance AWS's dominance as the best-in-class cloud provider. Ultra-fast grocery delivery News: Amazon said it is testing an ultra-fast delivery service for fresh groceries, everyday essentials, and popular items, available in as little as 30 minutes, starting in Seattle and Philadelphia. Amazon Prime membersÂ get discounted delivery fees starting at $3.99 per order, compared with $13.99 for non-Prime customers. Club take: Amazon has continued to expand into online grocery and essentials, as customers increasingly opt to shop for daily essentials with the online retailer. While the retail business comes with thin margins, Amazon continues to operate it with an eye on reducing its cost to serve, which should help improve margins over time. Amazon is already second in line as the top U.S. retailer, right behind Walmart in terms of U.S. online grocery sales. As it continues to make headway in the industry, Amazon should be able to capitalize on this significant growth opportunity, especially as it harnesses its advanced AI capabilities for optimal inventory placement and demand forecasting. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long AMZN, NVDA. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

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Amazon had a very big week that could shape where its stagnant stock goes next

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