Amazon Maintains Strong AI Positioning, Barclays Reiterates Overweight Rating

Font: Financial Modeling Prep  • Mar 23, 2026

Barclays reiterated its Overweight rating and $300 price target on Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), highlighting strengthening momentum in its cloud business driven by AI-related demand.

The firm noted that Amazon Web Services (AWS) secured a major agreement with OpenAI, bringing total expected spending on AWS to approximately $138 billion over the next seven to eight years. Barclays incorporated this into its projections, assuming a gradual ramp beginning in 2026. The analyst expects this to be reflected in AWS backlog, which is anticipated to exceed $350 billion in the upcoming quarter.

At the same time, Anthropic’s annual recurring revenue was said to be accelerating, particularly due to products such as Claude Code and Cowork. The company reportedly saw ARR rise by 35% within weeks during the first quarter of 2026, suggesting strong enterprise adoption. Barclays indicated that estimates may continue to move higher as Anthropic demonstrates product-market fit.

The firm raised its 2027 AWS revenue forecast by 5% and expects AWS growth to reach 34% in the third quarter of 2026 before moderating thereafter. Beyond financial projections, Barclays believes AWS is well positioned to capture market share in the evolving AI landscape, particularly in the emerging “agentic AI” era.

The analyst highlighted AWS’s role in enabling a stateful runtime environment for AI agents through Bedrock, supported by OpenAI integrations and significant compute usage from Anthropic.

CEO Andy Jassy previously indicated the company sees a path to $600 billion in revenue by 2036, implying an 11% compound annual growth rate from Barclays’ 2028 estimates, which the firm suggested may prove conservative.

Barclays noted that Amazon shares have been relatively stagnant in recent years, but sees potential catalysts including AWS acceleration, possible IPOs from leading AI companies, and growing enterprise adoption of agentic AI. Near-term concerns such as fuel cost inflation, which accounts for roughly 11% of shipping expenses, were described as manageable.