The four biggest tech companies in the world reported earnings post market today for the first time since the US began combat operations in Iran.
TL;DR — Four beats. Three stocks down Alphabet won the night with 63% cloud growth. Amazon nearly doubled EPS. Meta and Microsoft solid but not spectacular. AI spending continues — $650B-$700B this year across the hyperscalers.
Meta — mixed Revenue beat at $56.3B vs $55.45B expected. Sales up 33% year over year. But user growth disappointed — 3.56B daily active people vs 3.62B expected, partly because of internet disruptions in Iran and WhatsApp being restricted in Russia. Q1 capex came in below estimates but full year guidance was actually raised to $125-145B, up from $115-135B. Stock down 5.5% currently.
Microsoft — solid Revenue $82.89B vs $81.39B expected. EPS $4.27 vs $4.06 expected. Azure cloud grew 40% — above the 39.3% expected. AI business now running at $37B annually, up 123% year over year. Microsoft 365 Copilot now has 20 million paid seats, up from 15 million last quarter. Stock down about 2.6% currently.
Alphabet — the clear winner Revenue $109.9B vs $107.2B expected. Google Cloud grew 63% to $20B — Wall Street expected $18B. That's a $2B beat on cloud alone. CEO said Gemini paid users grew 40% in a single quarter. Stock up 6% currently.
Amazon — biggest earnings beat EPS $2.78 vs $1.64 expected — nearly double what Wall Street predicted. Revenue $181.5B vs $177.3B expected. AWS cloud grew 28%, its fastest growth in over three years. Q2 guidance of $194-199B also above the $188.9B expected. Stock down 2% currently.
The big picture:
All four beat revenue expectations. Three stocks are currently down. This shows that markets were already pricing in strong results. Anything short of spectacular are getting sold.
Alphabet is the only one that provided a "pure" AI growth story (63% cloud growth + $460B backlog) and markets are rewarding it.
The AI spending story is intact. Combined these four companies are on track to spend over $650B-$700B on AI infrastructure in 2026 — more than the GDP of Singapore. Today's results suggest that spending is starting to show up in real revenue numbers, especially in cloud.
Apple reports tomorrow. The last data point to close out the biggest earnings week of 2026. no BS is this accurate
I cover stuff like this every week in plain English: novafinance.substack.com