Amazon lost half its value this year as tech stocks got crushed and recession fears grew
An Amazon driver loads packages into a delivery van at an Amazon delivery station on November 28, 2022 in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
It was a brutal year for mega-cap tech stocks across the board. But 2022 was especially rough for Amazon.
Shares of the e-retailer are wrapping up their worst year since the dot-com crash. The stock has tumbled 51% in 2022, marking the biggest decline since 2000, when it plunged 80%. Only Tesla, down 68%, and Meta, off 66%, have had a worse year among the most valuable tech companies.
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Amazon’s market cap has shrunk to about $834 billion from $1.7 trillion to start the year. The company fell out of the trillion-dollar club last month.
Much of Amazon’s misfortunes are tied to the economy and macro environment. Soaring inflation and rising interest rates have pushed investors away from growth and into companies with high profit margins, consistent cash flow and high dividend yields.
But Amazon investors have had other reasons to exit the stock. The company is contending with slowing sales, as predictions of a sustained post-Covid e-commerce boom didn’t pan out. At the height of the pandemic, consumers came to depend on online retailers like Amazon for goods ranging from toilet paper and face masks to patio furniture. That drove Amazon’s stock to record highs as sales soared.
As the economy reopened, consumers gradually returned to shopping in stores and spending on things like travel and restaurants, which caused Amazon’s impressive revenue growth to fade. The situation only worsened at the start of this year, as the company confronted higher costs tied to inflation, the war in Ukraine and supply chain constraints.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos at the helm in July 2021, admitted that the company hired too many workers and overbuilt its warehouse network as it raced to keep up with pandemic-era demand. It’s since paused or abandoned plans to open some new facilities, and its head count shrank in the second quarter.
Amazon’s 2022 drop vs. Tesla and Meta
Jassy has also embarked on a wide-ranging review of the company’s expenses, resulting in some programs being shuttered and a hiring freeze across its corporate workforce. Last month, Amazon began making what’s expected to be the largest corporate job cuts in its history, aiming to lay off as many as 10,000 employees.
Even Amazon’s cloud computing segment, typically a refuge for investors, recorded its weakest revenue growth to date in the third quarter.
Looking to 2023, several analysts have reduced their estimates, citing persistent macro headwinds and continued softness in online retail and cloud computing.
Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney, in a Dec. 18 note, lowered his 2023 estimates for Amazon, predicting total retail sales growth for the year of 6%, down from 10%. He cut his forecast for annual Amazon Web Services revenue growth to 20% from 26%.
Still, Mahaney said he remains bullish on Amazon’s long-term prospects, calling it a “buffet buy” because of its assortment of businesses. He pointed to Amazon’s growing share in retail, cloud and advertising, its apparent insulation from risks such as ad privacy changes, and its continued investment in areas like groceries, health care and logistics.
“For those investors who utilize 2-3 year time horizons and are looking to take advantage of the recent dislocation in high quality ‘Net stocks, we highly recommend AMZN,” wrote Mahaney, who has an outperform rating on the stock. While recessionary concerns are real and earnings estimate will have to come down, “AMZN remains arguably the highest quality asset we cover in terms of Revenue and Profit outlooks,” Mahaney wrote.
WATCH: Recession could mark end of headwinds for tech stocks like Amazon and Meta
Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Technology
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports
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