Big Tech Earnings: What Separated the Winners and Losers

It’s been the stock market’s most critical week of earnings, and the Big Tech winners and losers have emerged.

Apple reported after the closing bell on Thursday, following Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft releasing results on Wednesday.

The five Magnificent Seven names account for roughly $15.5 trillion of combined market cap.

Unsurprisingly, AI took center stage, with investors welcoming cloud growth offsetting massive AI investments.

All five companies beat earning expectations on the top and bottom lines, but not all of the results wowed investors.

Here’s the Big Tech’s post-earnings scorecard.

Apple delivered a strong earnings beat, trotted out incoming CEO, John Ternus, and shifted away from its longstanding cash neutral goal.

The move: +3.6%

Why: Apple reported revenue of $111.2 billion, up 17% year over year and surpassing Wall Street’s estimate of $109.6 billion. It also signaled strong demand for its new budget line of Macbook and iPhone 17 products.

After slumping slightly after the results, the stock shot up during the call as investors heard Apple would abandon its cash neutral target.

“Our goal of net cash neutral has really served us well. It has been a valuable framework for us, and for our capital structure since 2018,” Apple CFO Kevan Parekh said on the call.

“We believe we’re at a stage where we’re evaluating cash and debt independently is really the right approach for us and allows us to make more optimal economic decisions around how we best utilize our debt and cash portfolios to support the business, based on business factors and market conditions,” he added.

Apple has lagged other Mag 7 names in capex in the AI era, but the move away from net cash neutral could signal a changing landscape.

This was Apple’s first earnings report since announcing John Ternus as incoming CEO who will succeed Tim Cook.

Meta’s ballooning AI spending overshadowed its first quarter earnings strength and the stock move reflected it.

The move: -9%

Why: Meta lifted its already hefty full year capital expenditures outlook.

The Facebook parent company told investors it now expects to spend $125 billion to $145 billion in 2026, a big jump from the $115 billion to $135 billion range they gave the quarter prior.

“This reflects our expectations for higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future year capacity,” Meta CFO Susan Li said, adding “We have continued to underestimate our compute needs,” she added

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the jump in spending is due to higher component costs, specifically memory chips. Apple also flagged high memory costs as a headwind.

Google’s results wowed Wall Street with strength in its cloud business supporting AI spending.

The move: +7%

Why: Google Cloud is growing, thanks to AI.

Alphabet reported its cloud business recorded $20 billion in revenue, beating estimates, driven by its enterprise AI offerings.

“We are seeing strong deal momentum, doubling the number of $100 million to $1 billion deals year-on-year and signing multiple $1 billion-plus deals,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on the earnings call.

He reported, “In Q1, revenue from products built on our GenAI models grew nearly 800% year-over-year.”

Like Meta, Alphabet also boosted its full year capex outlook, but investors didn’t seem to mind. The Google parent company expects to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion this year, compared to the $175 billion to $185 billion range previously provided.

Amazon stock popped after the company reported strong cloud growth and offered a look at its AI chip business.

The move: +2%

Why: Amazon Web Services saw its strong growth and the company offered a promising update on the chip business.

AWS revenue grew 28% to $37.6 billion, beating estimates of $37 billion. Like Alphabet, strength in Amazon’s cloud business has helped ease investor worries about massive AI spending.

In other news, CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon’s Trainium AI chips will be ready to sell to outside customers in the next couple of years.

Amazon didn’t update its $200 billion capex guidance for 2026.

Microsoft boosted its AI spending plans, but cloud strength seemed to avoid investor panic, muting losses.

The move: -3%

Why: Microsoft lifted its annual capex guidance to $190 billion for the fiscal year, a notable jump from the $147 billion analysts expected.

Cloud revenue was $54.5 billion, a 29% rise from the year-ago period. Microsoft’s cloud business is growing, but it’s still lagging the timeline investors hoped for to offset spending.

“We remain confident in the return on these investments,” Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said, adding that the increased spending will restrain short-term revenue growth.

Microsoft, along with Meta, plans to cut its head count in the quarters ahead.