Full-Time
Posted on 12/10/2024
Global online marketplace and cloud services
$99.5k - $200k/yr
Company Historically Provides H1B Sponsorship
Palo Alto, CA, USA + 2 more
More locations: Seattle, WA, USA | Redmond, WA, USA
In Person
Bachelor's, Master's, PhD
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Amazon operates a global e-commerce platform with a large online marketplace that connects consumers to both direct sales and third-party sellers across many product categories. It earns money from product sales and marketplace fees, Amazon Prime subscriptions, and AWS cloud services, plus a large Amazon Associates affiliate network. The platform combines fast shipping, streaming, cloud computing, and digital services to reach customers across numerous countries. Its goal is to be the world’s most customer-centric company by offering convenient access to a wide range of products and services.
Company Size
10,001+
Company Stage
IPO
Headquarters
Seattle, Washington
Founded
1994
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Flexible Work Hours
Company Equity
Amazon's Q2 2026 earnings of $5.75 per share far exceeded analyst expectations of $1.82, causing its stock to surge 15%. However, over 85% of the company's $62.6 billion net income came from paper gains rather than operational profits. Paper gains are unrealized increases in the value of stock holdings that companies must report as income under GAAP and IFRS accounting standards, even though the shares haven't been sold. In Amazon's case, $53.4 billion came from unrealized gains in its Anthropic holdings, a loss-making AI company whose estimated valuation rose during the quarter. This demonstrates how paper gains can significantly inflate reported earnings whilst representing no actual cash received by the company.
Billionaire investor David Tepper of Appaloosa Management has been adding positions in several "Magnificent Seven" technology stocks, including Amazon, Meta Platforms, Alphabet, and Nvidia. The hedge fund manager, worth an estimated $23.7 billion, simultaneously sold memory stocks during the period. Amazon represents over 15% of Tepper's portfolio. The company's cloud computing unit AWS grew revenue 37% year-over-year in Q2, its fastest growth in four and a half years. Its e-commerce business benefits from investments in robotics and AI, whilst its digital advertising business continues expanding rapidly. Tepper also acquired Meta Platforms shares aggressively. The company trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 16 times 2027 analyst estimates, despite growing revenue 28% in Q2. Meta is beginning to introduce advertisements to its Threads and WhatsApp platforms.
AI is shifting from a software business to a capital-intensive industry as large language models become commodities, according to analysis in Fortune. Since 2023, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta have invested $1.1 trillion in AI infrastructure, with plans to spend another $745 billion this year. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently stated that "every model is substitutable", whilst Amazon's Andy Jassy predicted "at least half a dozen" comparably good AI models will emerge. This makes financing and scale more important than owning frontier models themselves. Cloud providers are seeing returns despite massive spending. Microsoft's cloud business grew 32% to $39.3 billion, Amazon Web Services rose 37% to $42.2 billion, and Google Cloud surged 82% to $24.8 billion. However, both OpenAI and Anthropic remain loss-making, raising questions about long-term value generation.
Amazon announced plans to expand drone delivery to nearly 500 US cities and towns by the end of this year, representing a sixfold increase in its network footprint. The expansion will reach tens of millions of customers across metro areas including Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, and Atlanta. The service delivers items weighing five pounds or less within roughly 30 minutes from fulfilment sites. Prime members spending $50 or more receive free delivery; otherwise fees are $2.99 for Prime members and $4.99 for non-Prime members. Amazon has delivered hundreds of thousands of packages by drone this year. However, this represents just a fraction of the nearly 20 million packages Amazon delivers daily in the US. The drones operate within a seven-mile radius, primarily in suburban locations to avoid obstacles.
Amazon plans to expand its Prime Air delivery drone service sixfold to nearly 500 US cities and towns by the end of 2026. The company will soon launch in Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Syracuse, and Boise, adding to its existing operations in 10 cities across seven states. Walmart is also scaling up drone deliveries through partnerships with Wing and Zipline, aiming to expand from 66 stores to over 270 by 2027. Zipline separately partnered with Uber to reach 1 million drone deliveries daily by 2029. However, the expansion faces challenges. Amazon has experienced several safety incidents, including drones crashing into a construction crane and an apartment building. Residents increasingly complain about noise pollution, describing delivery drones as sounding like "flying leaf blowers" passing overhead up to 50 times daily. Some communities have held public protests over the disruption.