Amazon’s Eventful Week May Steer Its Stagnant Stock Forward

Amazon dominated headlines this week, from a fresh wave of announcements at its AWS re:Invent conference to speculation about its long‑standing partnership with the United States Postal Service. The flurry of news comes on the heels of a challenging 2025, with the company’s share price up 4.6% versus the S&P 500’s 16.4% gain and still lagging behind the Magnificent Seven peers. While AWS is showing a renewed growth trajectory and Prime remains the cornerstone of Amazon’s retail empire, investors are watching closely for signs that the retailer can keep pace in the artificial‑intelligence race and avoid margin erosion from rising costs.

Analyst perspective – Jeff Marks, portfolio director at Club, wrote in a Thursday note that “a better year is ahead as management continues to prove out its AI strategy and expand operating margins.” He added that the stock is positioned for a rebound in 2026.

Cloud event delivers a hardware lift

At re:Invent in Las Vegas, AWS chief Matt Garman unveiled Trainium 3, the third generation of Amazon’s custom‑built AI accelerator. The chip claims a four‑fold improvement in compute performance, energy efficiency and memory bandwidth over its predecessor, and the roadmap already includes Trainium 4. In parallel, AWS rolled out a suite of AI‑enabled services—automated agents, data‑pipeline accelerators and industry‑specific platforms—that aim to shorten time‑to‑value for enterprise customers.

From a strategic standpoint, the new silicon reduces Amazon’s reliance on Nvidia GPUs, a move that could diversify supply‑chain risk and improve cost structure. However, analysts note that the immediate bottleneck for scaling AI workloads remains datacenter capacity. To fully capitalize on the hardware advantage, AWS will need to accelerate the procurement of Nvidia GPUs for mixed‑precision training while scaling its own custom chips to serve the bulk of inference traffic.

USPS partnership under the microscope

A Washington Post report suggested Amazon may let its contract with the United States Postal Service expire in October 2026, potentially ending a 30‑year relationship. The speculation stems from Amazon’s rapidly expanding logistics arm—Amazon Logistics—which already handles billions of parcels a year and now outsources more “last‑mile” deliveries to its own fleet.

Amazon has not confirmed the plan, but the implication is clear: eliminating the USPS as an intermediary could tighten control over delivery costs and improve margin visibility, especially in low‑weight, high‑volume shipments that dominate third‑party seller traffic. The USPS still provides valuable coverage in remote or hard‑to‑reach areas where building a proprietary network would be prohibitively expensive. A full transition would therefore require significant capital investment in new delivery infrastructure and could face regulatory scrutiny.

Anthropic IPO could be a windfall for AWS

Financial‑press rumors indicate that Anthropic, the AI start‑up behind the Claude chatbot, is preparing for a large‑scale initial public offering in early 2026. Amazon has poured roughly $8 billion into the company, securing Anthropic as a key AWS customer for both training and inference workloads.

If the IPO materializes, Amazon stands to benefit in two ways. First, a higher market valuation would increase the value of its equity stake. Second, Anthropic’s growth would drive sustained demand for AWS’s high‑performance computing resources, reinforcing Amazon’s position as the premier cloud platform for large‑scale generative‑AI models.

Ultra‑fast grocery delivery expands to new markets

Amazon announced pilot testing of a 30‑minute delivery service for fresh groceries, everyday essentials and popular convenience items in Seattle and Philadelphia. Prime members receive a discounted delivery fee of $3.99 per order, compared with $13.99 for non‑Prime shoppers.

The initiative leverages Amazon’s network of fulfillment centers, dark stores and a growing fleet of delivery scooters and vans. By integrating AI‑driven demand forecasting and dynamic inventory placement, the service aims to reduce “time‑to‑shelf” and improve order density, ultimately driving down per‑order logistics costs. While grocery margins remain thin, the volume potential and cross‑selling opportunities with the broader Prime ecosystem make this a strategic growth lever.

Investment outlook

Amazon’s diversified portfolio—spanning cloud infrastructure, e‑commerce, logistics, and emerging AI services—offers multiple pathways for margin expansion. The company’s continued investment in custom silicon and AI‑focused cloud tools positions AWS to capture a larger share of the generative‑AI spend, while the potential disengagement from the USPS could tighten cost controls across the retail network. Finally, the rollout of ultra‑fast grocery delivery showcases how Amazon can monetize its logistics framework in a high‑growth, low‑margin segment.

For investors, the key catalysts to watch in the coming year are:

• Adoption rates of Trainium 3/4 and the mix of custom‑chip versus Nvidia GPU usage in AWS.
• The outcome of the USPS contract negotiations and any capital commitments to expand Amazon‑owned last‑mile capabilities.
• Anthropic’s IPO timeline and the impact on AWS’s AI workload pipeline.
• Scaling of the 30‑minute grocery delivery model and its effect on overall Prime membership value.

Collectively, these developments suggest that Amazon is positioning itself for a stronger second half of 2025 and a potentially accelerated growth trajectory in 2026.