Large numbers.

Amazon raked in more than $200 billion in net sales during the second quarter, the company said on Thursday afternoon in the US.

The top-line print — $200.606 billion to be precise about things — was a beat. Consensus was looking for something like $197 billion.

The YoY growth rate, almost 20%, was the briskest in five years. That pace will likely decelerate, though. Taking the midpoint, the current-quarter sales guide implies top-line growth of just under 11% in Q3.

As was the case with Microsoft (which soared on Thursday after reporting the best Azure growth in four years) and Alphabet (which plunged last week as spending concerns trumped a blockbuster Google Cloud result), all eyes were on cloud and capex at Amazon.

I won’t bury the lede any further: AWS revenue was $42.20 billion, up 37% YoY. That was an easy beat and, as Andy Jassy gleefully noted, the fastest growth in 18 quarters. “AWS is booming,” he said on Thursday afternoon, adding that the company’s AI and Chips businesses both boast run rates exceeding $25 billion. Ad revenue was basically in line, growing 26% to $19.81 billion.

So all good there. On the capex front, Amazon spent $54.20 billion on property and equipment last quarter. That was more than the $49.50 billion analysts expected. The YoY gain, 68%, was slower than Q1’s 77% YoY increase.

Free cash flow was negative on a trailing twelve month basis thanks to “investments in artificial intelligence.” The company recorded “other income” of more than $53 billion from its Anthropic stake.

Having now seen Google Cloud, Azure and AWS growth all accelerate, I’ll brave that all this capex is in fact bearing fruit. Whether that fruit’s sweet enough for investors I can’t say. Only you can judge what’s “worth it” as a shareholder.

But all snark aside — and when you’re spending whatever it is now, more than $700 billion between the hyper-scalers in 2026 alone, there’s a lot of snark to be had — it’d be disingenuous to pretend there’s no evidence of meaningful ROI on these outlays. There is.

Before running through the usual highlight reel of quarterly accomplishments, Jassy said “there’s a lot to be excited about” at Amazon. “We have much more coming in the second half of the year,” he added.

Meanwhile, Apple said total sales were $109.42 billion in fiscal Q3. That was $800 million or so ahead of estimates and counted as a June-quarter record.

This is Tim Cook’s swan song. He’ll hand the reins to John Ternus next quarter. The world’s most important consumer products company logged “double-digit revenue growth across iPhone, Mac and Services, and in every geographic segment,” Cook remarked.

As the figure shows, this was the second consecutive quarter during which Apple logged sales growth of 16.5%.

iPhone sales of $54.25 billion were a beat, and rose nearly 22% YoY. Greater China sales rose at the same impressive rate. Those were the two boxes Apple needed to check, and as an investor, I consider them ticked.

That said, consensus for China sales was $19.58 billion, so despite the impressive growth rate, $18.82 billion was a meaningful miss. At the same time, services revenue, a reliable bright spot for Apple, was also a miss at $30.74 billion versus $31.36 billion expected.

Obviously, margins are a concern following a raft of reluctant price hikes the company blamed on “huge” component cost increases, as Cook put it last month, describing the memory crunch. But margins looked fine, even excluding a 2ppt benefit from tariff refunds. Product revenue growth of 18% compared pretty favorably with an 8% rise in product sales costs. Operating income rose 27% YoY. EPS of $2.02 beat by 12 cents.

Markets will probably frown at the Greater China “miss,” but there’s nothing wrong at Apple. Unless you count my perennial gripe, which says this is a hardware-first company that hasn’t released a world-changing device since Steve Jobs died.

Eventually, they need to address that. But as I’m keen to emphasize every quarter, this is quite possibly the best-run company in the entire history of capitalism. I don’t expect that to change with the CEO transition.