Amazon (AMZN) shares are trading near their recent record high of $200, achieved at Tuesday's market close. This milestone comes after the company surpassed the $2 trillion market capitalization mark.

Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley breaks down the factors propelling Amazon's growth alongside CEO Andy Jassy's strategic initiatives since taking the helm from founder Jeff Bezos.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

We are keeping a close eye on Amazon shares fairly muted this morning down about 1% after hitting its highest point ever.

The stock closing at $200 on Tuesday's close.

This is a good sign for the CEO is going to have, he will have been in the job for three years as of Friday Yah Dance tech editor Dan Howley is here to weigh in.

Dan.

Thanks so much for being here.

Look, obviously, it's been a record breaking year for Amazon hitting that record breaking market cap.

What could potentially drive this stock to even further highs and how much more pressure is on the name given this record?

Yeah, man, I think a lot of this has to do with Andy Jasse and his kind of uh cost uh controls that he put into place.

Obviously, there were a lot of layoffs.

Uh Part of the, the reason why they had that pullback uh last year um was because in the year before it was because of the over expansion that they during COVID.

So they basically figured, look, everybody is inside now because of this pandemic, everyone's gonna stay inside forever.

It turns out that, that is not true.

People like going out and shopping and doing other things.

Um, and so they needed to pull back.

Um, they've since done that.

They've also seen, uh, more growth in Aws, something that, uh Wall Street was nervous, had kind of hit its peak and was now just going to kind of slowly grow over time.

But A I has helped to drive new expansion there and the investments that they're making in A I is helping with that as well.

So that's really, I think where a lot of people are going to be looking or Amazon to kind of drive its next level of growth, that kind of ability for them to tap into their A I capabilities.

Uh They do have tough competition.

Microsoft obviously is basically, you know, best friends with open A I. Um and Google has its own A I capabilities that it's pushing uh in their cloud services as well.

So, you know, it's not as though this is going to be easy for them.

Um You know, when you think about A I right now, frankly, a lot of it is, you know, Microsoft and Google uh Amazon however is there and they are pushing it.

Um And so that's something that could be really uh uh their next growth driver on the, the, the storefront, the the retail side of things they're trying to take on uh tu go along uh with the, you know, low cost direct shipping kind of goods uh that could help them on the retail side of things.

Uh And then they have uh prime day coming up.

Uh I believe it's on the 16th and 17th.

Uh And so that should give an indicator of how much people are actually shopping uh on the retail side.

But really, I think it's all going to be about as everything in tech is right now.

A I all right, Dan, thanks so much as always for joining us on all things tech and of course the A I impact in the room.

Appreciate it.