Shares of Amazon (AMZN) gained approximately 4% on Friday, opening the day at $266.43, after an analyst upgrade from Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney, who raised his price objective to $355 from the previous $315 while maintaining an optimistic rating on the stock.

According to TipRanks data, Mahaney ranks 423rd among more than 12,500 financial analysts and posts an 84% accuracy rate on Amazon calls, with an average return of 21.81% per recommendation over one-year timeframes. That track record lends credibility to his latest assessment.

Survey Findings Behind the Upgrade

The price target revision was supported by findings from Evercore's recent U.S. Online Retail survey, which highlighted multiple positive indicators for Amazon's e-commerce operations.

The data shows Amazon commands a 92% penetration rate among U.S. online shoppers, significantly outpacing Walmart. Customer satisfaction scores reached 76%, while approximately 60% of Prime subscribers indicated they would keep their membership even with a $20 annual fee increase.

Emerging AI technology is also producing tangible commerce results. Survey responses revealed that 57% of users engaging with Alexa AI purchased products they had not actively searched for, indicating that artificial intelligence is generating fresh demand patterns rather than simply redirecting existing shopping behavior.

Enhanced Logistics and Prime Member Value

Fulfillment metrics showed notable improvement. Standard same-day delivery adoption recovered to 49%, while Prime subscribers who use same-day services now spend 3.1 times more than non-Prime customers—the largest spending differential Mahaney has observed in his coverage of the company.

Amazon's Perishable Checkout feature is driving grocery category growth, with approximately half of exposed users adding fresh food items to their shopping carts.

On the technology infrastructure front, AWS is executing an aggressive expansion strategy. The cloud division plans to integrate 2 million premium Nvidia GPUs, featuring Blackwell Ultra and Rubin architectures, throughout 2027 and 2028. This expansion brings Amazon's total disclosed semiconductor procurement to roughly 3 million units. The procurement move places Amazon alongside Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, which have also committed to multiyear buildouts of AI data center capacity as the largest cloud providers compete for AI computing workloads.

Market participants interpret the substantial GPU investment as confirmation that AI computing demand on AWS remains robust and that management is committed to deploying capital to capture the opportunity.

Strong Q2 Financial Performance

Amazon's latest quarterly results, announced on July 30, reinforced the positive momentum. The company delivered Q2 earnings per share of $5.75 versus analyst expectations of $1.82, a substantial beat of $3.93 per share. Total revenue reached $200.61 billion, surpassing the $197.03 billion consensus forecast and marking a 19.6% increase over the prior-year quarter.

AWS revenue expanded roughly 37% to reach $42.2 billion in Q2, while Amazon's artificial intelligence and semiconductor businesses each achieved annualized revenue run rates exceeding $25 billion.

Among institutional investors, Athena Wealth Management expanded its Amazon holdings by 47% during Q2, and multiple other investment firms similarly increased their stakes over the reporting period.

Analyst sentiment remains overwhelmingly bullish. With 39 Buy ratings and just one Hold recommendation issued over the past three months, the consensus stands at Strong Buy. The mean price target of $334.05 suggests approximately 25% appreciation potential from present trading levels.

Mahaney's updated $355 price objective exceeds the Street average, implying 33% upside from Friday's opening price. Beyond the upgrade itself, investors are likely to watch whether Amazon's AI-driven shopping features such as Alexa AI and its capital commitments to GPU capacity translate into sustained revenue growth in coming quarters—the central question the new price target rests on.