Amazon Jumps 15%, Apple Sinks 7% — Nasdaq Still Gains 1%

Amazon surged 15% while Apple sank as much as 9.7% in the same session, and the Nasdaq Composite still closed up roughly 1% — a split-screen reaction to Big Tech's biggest earnings day of the quarter.

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What happened

Amazon reported second-quarter results that blew past estimates: revenue topped $200 billion for the first time in a single quarter, and operating income jumped 43% to $27.5 billion. The headline number was AWS. Amazon's cloud unit posted $42.2 billion in revenue, up 37% year over year — its fastest growth in 18 quarters — with AWS operating income rising to $16.6 billion at a 39.4% margin, comfortably ahead of the ~31% growth analysts had modeled. Shares jumped 15% to around $270.90.

Apple's quarter was more complicated. The company beat on overall revenue and profit, with record June-quarter sales of $109 billion and iPhone revenue up 22%. But services revenue came in at $30.74 billion, missing the roughly $31.22 billion analysts expected and decelerating sharply from Q2's 16.3% growth. Apple also guided September-quarter revenue growth to just 9-11%, below the 12% consensus, citing supply constraints alongside soft iPad numbers. The stock fell as much as 9.7% intraday, wiping out close to $475 billion in market value at the low.

Why it matters

The two moves effectively canceled each other out at the index level: the S&P 500 held a gain near 7,472 and the Nasdaq rose about 1%, even as one of its two largest components lost nearly half a trillion dollars in value in a single session. That's a reminder that broad index strength can mask sharply diverging stories underneath — something I touched on in Amazon Jumped 14%. Alphabet Fell 6% on the Same Capex Story, where a similar Amazon rally coincided with a selloff in another mega-cap. This time the split isn't about capex spending — it's about which companies are actually converting AI infrastructure investment into visible profit growth right now, and which are being penalized for decelerating high-margin revenue even after beating headline estimates.

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Who's affected

• Amazon (AMZN): The AWS re-acceleration is the story — 37% growth is the fastest in 18 quarters, and management said AWS's AI and chips businesses each now run above a $25 billion annualized rate. That's the clearest sign yet that cloud customers are converting AI pilots into paid infrastructure spend.
• Apple (AAPL): The selloff wasn't about the iPhone — unit revenue grew 22%. It was services, Apple's highest-margin segment, decelerating alongside weak forward guidance and supply constraints flagged for the current quarter. Investors read the record quarter as partly a function of favorable comparisons rather than durable momentum.
• Cloud and AI infrastructure peers: A 37% AWS growth print raises the bar for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud comparisons and reinforces that hyperscaler capex is still finding paying demand, not just build-out.
• Apple's supply chain and services partners: Slower services growth and flagged supply constraints put near-term scrutiny on component suppliers and subscription-adjacent revenue lines heading into the December quarter.

What to watch next

The next signal is whether Amazon can sustain AWS's growth rate into Q3 without margin compression, and whether Apple's September-quarter guidance — the low end of which implies real deceleration — turns out conservative or accurate. Watch AWS backlog and capacity commentary on the next call, and watch whether Apple's services line stabilizes or continues decelerating, since that segment carries outsized weight in the stock's margin story.

This is not financial advice — always do your own research before making investment decisions.

Both stocks moved on real earnings data, not rumor — but a single quarter's beat or miss doesn't settle the longer argument about which of these companies is actually monetizing AI infrastructure fastest.