A rare same-day earnings blitz from Big Tech offered investors a snapshot of the AI economy in motion—and mostly eased bubble fears. Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon posted double-digit gains in their cloud businesses, crediting AI adoption for outsized demand and signaling more investment in data centers. Alphabet reported $5.11 a share in earnings on $109.9 billion in revenue, topping expectations, while Google Cloud grew 63% year over year. Amazon delivered $2.78 a share versus the $1.64 Wall Street forecast, on $181.5 billion in sales. Microsoft beat with $4.27 a share and paired results with a large voluntary retirement program. Meta, which isn’t a cloud provider, topped revenue expectations at $56.31 billion but rattled investors by boosting capital-spending guidance to $125 billion to $145 billion; its shares fell more than 5% after hours. Together, the four companies are planning about $650 billion in 2026 AI infrastructure outlays, intensifying scrutiny of capex and returns as the Mag-7 now account for over 30% of the S&P 500’s market value. The wave of AI-driven investment is arriving alongside broad head-count reductions across the sector, even as executives tout productivity gains. For now, stronger cloud results and upbeat guidance suggest AI is translating into revenue, anchoring a cautious but constructive outlook for U.S. equities.
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Cloud computing
Google Cloud Platform
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