Tech giants’ results show rosy outlook for AI boom and US stock market
Unusual simultaneous reports of financial results by several of the US’s largest tech companies gave positive indications for the stock market despite widespread fears of an AI bubble on Wednesday,Four of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks, the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world, reported their quarterly financial results on Wednesday,The cluster is not typical, as these disclosures do not often occur on the same day, and provides a snapshot of how the tech industry is faring as it rides the AI boom,Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft all revealed double-digit gains in their cloud computing units, which have seen supercharged growth thanks to increasing adoption of AI,Meta, not in the business of cloud computing, failed to meet Wall Street expectations.
Wall Street investors are closely watching the results as these tech companies lead the way on enormous spending on AI infrastructure such as datacenters.The four companies have together planned to spend $650bn in 2026 on AI infrastructure.Investors and economists anticipate that poor results could throw the market into turmoil, and will be scrutinizing capital expenditure projections.Both Alphabet and Meta revised their projections upward; the former’s revenue gains seemed to offset investors’ worries.The combined Mag-7 stocks make up over 30% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization.
The tech industry’s embrace of AI is also coinciding with widespread layoffs, which companies have either implicitly or explicitly linked to the technology.Meta and Microsoft announced large-scale reductions in staff earlier this month, with Meta saying the cuts would help it “offset the other investments we’re making”.More than 92,000 tech employees have been laid off globally so far this year, according to the tracking site Layoffs.fyi.Wednesday’s results mollified some investor concerns surrounding the health of the tech industry, as the four companies largely outperformed Wall Street expectations regarding revenue and earnings per share.
Meta’s announcement that it would once again increase its capital expenditures from $115bn minimum to $125bn drew alarm, however, causing its stock price to fall over 5% in after-hours trading,Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon received a boost from their cloud computing businesses, with Alphabet reporting 63% year-on-year growth for its Google Cloud service,“2026 is off to a terrific start,” the Alphabet and Google CEO, Sundar Pichai ,said in a statement, touting the company’s AI investment delivering returns,All four companies framed their results as proof that their integration of AI and building out of the infrastructure around it was working,The industry has for years faced questions about when its immense spending and fevered focus on the technology would pay off, while public concerns about AI’s impact on jobs and society has continued to grow.
Wednesday’s earnings reports seemed to provide a unanimous answer: AI will pay off in revenue from cloud computing.Meta’s call came after it announced last week it would be cutting 10% off its staff, about 8,000 employees, as it seeks to replace human labor with AI.The company also faced a regulatory setback in recent days after China blocked its $2bn acquisition of the AI firm Manus.Meta reported $56.31 in revenue, more than the $55.
45bn expected.It also revealed a more than 7% increase in its projected capital expenditure for this year, raising its estimate to $125bn to $145bn.During Meta’s earnings call on Wednesday, its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, denied that AI would replace humans and said it would instead “amplify people’s ability to do what they want”.Meta was “on track to deliver personal super-intelligence to billions of people”, Zuckerberg said in an earlier press release.Microsoft announced a round of buyouts at the same time as Meta’s layoffs, saying that the company would offer voluntary retirement to about 125,000 workers.
The company reported $4.27 earnings per share, beating the market prediction of $4.06.Amazon was another tech giant to conduct a swath of layoffs this year, cutting nearly 10% of its corporate workforce in the last five months – about 30,000 workers.Earlier in the year, the company said it would spend some $200bn in one year on AI infrastructure.
The company reported earnings of $2.78 per share, above/below the $1.64 Wall Street predicted.Its revenue was $181.5bn.
Alphabet, whose stock has risen over 100% in the past year, has dumped money into its infrastructure spending for AI,The company announced earlier this year it was planning on a capital expenditure of about $180bn to $190bn, as much as double last year’s expenditure,Alphabet reported earnings of $5,11 per share, beating market expectations,It also reported $109.
9bn in revenue, outpacing the $107,2bn expected,
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AI outperforms doctors in Harvard trial of emergency triage diagnoses
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LIV Golf races against time for investment with confirmation Saudi funding will end in 2026
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