Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Meta (Nasdaq: META) all reported earnings that beat Wall Street expectations, collectively posting more than $430 billion in quarterly revenue and pointing to artificial intelligence as the primary engine of growth. Less than a week earlier, Meta announced it would cut 8,000 workers, and Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to roughly 7% of its US workforce — its first such program in the company’s 51-year history.
Microsoft reported revenue of $82.9 billion, up 18% year over year, with operating income up 20% to $38.4 billion and net income up 23% to $31.8 billion. CEO Satya Nadella said the company’s AI business surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $37 billion, up 123% year over year. Azure and other cloud services grew 40%, and Microsoft’s commercial remaining performance obligation — contracted future revenue — rose 99% to $627 billion, a figure that signals demand is accelerating faster than current revenue captures.
Alphabet reported revenue of $109.9 billion, up 22%, with Google Cloud crossing $20 billion for the first time — up 63% from the same quarter a year ago and well above the $18.05 billion analysts had forecast. CEO Sundar Pichai said enterprise AI solutions became the primary growth driver for cloud for the first time in Q1, and that revenue from products built on Alphabet’s generative AI models grew nearly 800% year over year. He also flagged a constraint: “We are compute constrained in the near term,” Pichai told analysts. “Our cloud revenue would have been higher if we were able to meet the demand.” Google Cloud’s backlog nearly doubled quarter on quarter to more than $460 billion.
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Amazon reported revenue of $181.5 billion, up 17%, with AWS growing 28% to $37.59 billion — its fastest growth in 13 quarters. CEO Andy Jassy said AWS’s AI revenue alone carries a run rate exceeding $15 billion and echoed Pichai’s constraint: demand is outrunning capacity despite adding 3.9 gigawatts of compute in 2025, with plans to double that by 2027. Net income came in at $30.3 billion, though that figure included $16.8 billion in pretax gains from Amazon’s investment in Anthropic. AWS backlog stood at $364 billion, not including a separate $100 billion Anthropic deal announced after the quarter closed.
Meta reported revenue of $56.3 billion, up 33%, with net income of $26.8 billion — though that figure included an $8 billion one-time tax benefit tied to the Trump administration’s tax bill; adjusted EPS would have been $3.13 lower without it. Unlike Microsoft and Alphabet, Meta does not break out a separate AI revenue line. Its AI spending flows primarily into ad-targeting infrastructure, with the company citing a 19% increase in ad impressions and a 12% rise in price per ad as evidence that the investment is working. User numbers, however, missed estimates: daily active people came in at 3.56 billion, a 4% annual increase, but more than 5% below the prior quarter. Meta attributed the shortfall in part to “internet disruptions in Iran.”
Meta’s stock fell roughly 6% in after-hours trading, with investors focused less on the revenue beat than on the company’s decision to raise its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $125–145 billion, up from a prior forecast of $115–135 billion, citing higher component pricing. Amazon has committed $200 billion in capex for 2026 — the largest of any single company.
Tech’s big 4 are expected to spend nearly $650 billion combined on capital expenditures in 2026, the bulk of it tied to AI infrastructure. But the spending figures arrive alongside job cut announcements.
Meta said it would cut approximately 10% of its global workforce — around 8,000 employees — beginning May 20, with additional cuts planned for the second half of the year. Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to senior directors and below who meet an age-plus-tenure threshold, affecting roughly 7% of its US staff. Amazon cut 16,000 workers in January alone, its second large-scale round of layoffs in three months, after cutting 14,000 in October.
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As of late April, more than 92,000 tech workers had been laid off in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi, bringing the total to nearly 900,000 since 2020.
The companies have offered varying explanations. Meta’s chief people officer said the cuts “offset the other investments we’re making.” Pichai has cited a 10% increase in engineering speed from AI adoption at Google. A 2026 Motion Recruitment study found AI adoption is reducing hiring for entry-level and generalized IT roles while demand for AI-specific positions remains high.
Read: CEOs Drop the Euphemisms: AI Is Now Openly Cited as the Reason for Mass Tech Layoffs
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has described the pattern as “AI washing” — companies attributing to AI efficiency gains layoffs they would have made regardless.
Information for this story was found via the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to the organizations discussed. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
