Peter Thiel’s Thiel Macro Lists Amazon as Top Holding as $10,000 Investment Turns Into $66,000 Over a Decade

Key Points

• Thiel Macro’s latest quarterly filing lists an Amazon stake worth about $118 million as its largest position.
• A $10,000 investment in Amazon 10 years ago is worth about $66,000 today, representing pure price appreciation.
• Amazon’s annual net income has expanded dramatically, growing from $2.4 billion in 2016 to $77.7 billion in 2025.

Billionaire Peter Thiel’s hedge fund, Thiel Macro, recently disclosed its latest portfolio holdings in a regulatory filing, revealing that its largest reported position is a major stake in e-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), valued at approximately $118 million as of June 30.

However, the filing itself is arguably less remarkable than the impressive track record of the fund’s top pick. In early September 2016, Amazon shares closed at a split-adjusted $39.44 (following the company’s 20-for-1 stock split in 2022). At Friday’s closing price of $258.51, a $10,000 investment made a decade ago would be worth approximately $66,000 today. This represents a total return of about 555%, or nearly 21% annualized.

This substantial growth represents pure price appreciation, as Amazon does not currently pay a dividend. What drove this remarkable return, and is such performance sustainable in the years ahead?

Image source: Amazon.

The profits grew even faster than the stock

The Amazon of 2016 was a vastly different company compared to today. Back then, the giant generated $136 billion in revenue, $4.2 billion in operating income, and just $2.4 billion in net income. Investors were paying over 100 times earnings for a business that was barely profitable. By 2025, revenue had more than quintupled to roughly $717 billion, while net income expanded approximately 32-fold to reach $77.7 billion. In other words, Amazon’s bottom line compounded far faster than its share price did.

This discrepancy explains much of the decade’s performance. The stock’s massive gains did not stem from investors paying a higher premium for its earnings; rather, shares currently trade at about 24 times next year’s expected earnings, a fraction of the valuation buyers paid in 2016. The business simply outgrew its valuation multiple.

The profit engine

Most of this dramatic transformation traces back to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing segment. In 2016, AWS generated $12.2 billion of revenue—representing about 9% of Amazon’s total—yet its $3.1 billion of operating income accounted for the bulk of the company’s overall operating profit. By 2025, the segment’s revenue had grown more than tenfold to $128.7 billion, and its operating income reached $45.6 billion.

Notably, the segment became more profitable as it scaled, with operating margins expanding from roughly 25% to about 35% over the decade. Furthermore, AWS’s growth is accelerating, not slowing down. Segment revenue rose 20% in 2025, with momentum building throughout the year and reaching 24% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. “AWS is booming, growing 36.7% year-over-year in Q2—our fastest growth in 18 quarters—and our AI and Chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion,” CEO Andy Jassy stated during the company’s second-quarter results in July. In dollar terms, that represented $42.2 billion of AWS revenue in the second quarter alone—an annualized pace of approximately $169 billion.

The cloud is not Amazon’s only emerging profit stream. The company’s advertising business, which Amazon didn’t even report as its own distinct revenue line a decade ago, generated $19.8 billion in revenue during the second quarter, marking a 26% increase year over year. This growth rate outpaced the overall company, representing an annualized run rate approaching $80 billion.

Can the next 10 years measure up?

A repeat of the past decade’s returns sets a very high bar. Another 555% gain would swell Amazon’s market value from approximately $2.8 trillion today to roughly $18 trillion—far exceeding the market capitalization of any public company currently trading. While investors should not plan on such a repeat, the stock does not need to replicate that exact performance to deliver solid returns. Instead, it simply needs profits to keep compounding.

To ensure this, Amazon is investing aggressively. Over the trailing 12 months, the investment has been heavy enough to swing free cash flow to an outflow of about $7.6 billion, largely driven by massive spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. While such an outflow may look alarming and could pressure profit margins in the short term, heavy investment ahead of the payoff is precisely how Amazon Web Services was built in the first place.

Would I buy Amazon stock today? Yes, though not because Thiel’s fund holds it. A quarterly filing only reveals where a fund stood weeks ago, not what prospective investors should buy today. The better reason is the business itself: Amazon arguably looks stronger than it did a decade ago, and a valuation of about 24 times next year’s expected earnings seems highly reasonable for a company still growing at such a rapid pace. However, prospective buyers should not purchase shares expecting a repeat of the past ten years. If profits continue to compound, the stock should perform well over the long term.

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