Big Tech Earnings: Winners and Losers in the AI Race

The Big Tech earnings season came to an end last week, with major players Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), and Tesla (TSLA) releasing their quarterly results. While some companies saw their stocks surge due to strong performances, others faced investor concerns over rising memory chip costs and AI spending strategies.

Apple's stock took a hit of 7% after the company issued a softer sales outlook for the September quarter, citing rising memory chip prices as a major concern. CEO Tim Cook described the situation as a '100-year flood on memory pricing,' which has put pressure on the company's margins. Despite this, Apple reported strong third-quarter results with revenue climbing 16% to $109.4 billion.

In contrast, Amazon and Microsoft saw their stocks surge by 17% and 21%, respectively, due to their strong performances in cloud computing and AI services. Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue jumped 37% to $42.2 billion, while Azure growth rose 43%. Microsoft's cloud business surpassed $100 billion in annual revenue for fiscal 2026.

Meta Platforms' stock clocked over a 6% weekly decline as investors questioned the company's AI spending strategy and slower-than-expected outlook despite strong second-quarter results. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is exploring ways to monetize its massive AI infrastructure investments by potentially selling computing capacity to outside customers.