Amazon's Q2 Beat Comes With a 30-Minute Delivery Push Into 250+ Cities

Amazon posted stronger-than-expected Q2 2026 results — earnings of $5.75 a share on $200.6 billion in revenue, ahead of Wall Street's $1.81-a-share and $196.16-billion estimates — with its Stores business accelerating to 15% growth and AWS sales up 37%.

Amazon Now: The Speed Bet Is Scaling Fast

• Amazon Now, the company's 30-minutes-or-less delivery service, added 80 new US cities and towns plus expansion into major Egyptian cities this quarter
• The service is now live in over 250 cities and towns across 9 countries
• Gross sales and units sold grew more than 80% quarter-over-quarter, with over 60% more customers served in the same period
• Globally, Amazon delivered over 40% more items same-day or overnight in the first half of 2026 than the same period a year earlier

What's Driving the Stores Number

CEO Andy Jassy tied the 15% Stores growth partly to Prime Day shifting into the quarter, but also flagged groceries and essentials growing meaningfully faster than the rest of the Stores business — a category where delivery speed, not price, is increasingly the competitive lever. AWS's acceleration to 37% growth, meanwhile, reflects continued enterprise AI infrastructure demand rather than a one-off event.

For retailers competing with Amazon on delivery expectations, the practical read is that "fast" now means under an hour in Amazon's core markets, not next-day — a bar that reshapes what a competitive fulfillment SLA needs to promise, especially in grocery and essentials categories.