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The rest of the economy might be on a bit of a roller coaster lately, but three of the tech giants at the heart of the AI race are holding steady for now.
Microsoft, Meta, and Google each reported earnings and revenue from the first quarter of the year that beat analyst consensus estimates this week and last. The results only reflect each company’s performance through March 31, however—that is, before President Trump’s early-April tariff bonanza kicked off a new stage in a global trade war.
But investors also took heart from Microsoft and Meta’s positive forecast for the current quarter (Google doesn’t provide such guidance, as a rule). Meta expects revenue for Q2 of between $42.5 billion and $45.5 billion—in line with analyst expectations—and Microsoft between $73.2 billion and $74.3 billion, higher than analysts had expected, according to CNBC.
Those steadfast numbers come as many big companies have scrapped guidance altogether amid the ongoing volatility around tariff policies.
Big spenders: All three companies have vowed to spend tens of billions of dollars each on AI infrastructure this year as they look to build out generative capabilities. And all three reiterated in their earnings calls that they’re still on course to do so.
Meta had previously said it would spend between $60 billion and $65 billion on capital expenditures this year. CFO Susan Li said during an earnings call that the company is upping that range to $64 billion to $72 billion, due to “increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware,” as well as more data center investments to support AI.
“The higher cost we expect to incur for infrastructure hardware this year really comes from suppliers who source from countries around the world,” Li said. “And there’s just a lot of uncertainty around this, given the ongoing trade discussions.”
Microsoft is on track to have spent $80 billion on capital expenditures when its fiscal year ends next month, CFO Amy Hood said during an earnings call. The company expects that number to grow at a lower rate after that, Hood said. Microsoft has said that it’s “slowing or pausing” some of its data center projects in recent months.
Hood said Microsoft is seeing more software and hardware efficiencies, as well as more “model diversity” that’s improving the overall efficiency of cloud and AI business growth.
Anat Ashkenazi, SVP and CFO of Alphabet and Google, said the company still plans to invest $75 billion in capital expenditures this year.
Continued AI growth: Microsoft said it sees continued “strong demand” for cloud services that it expects to continue into the current quarter. Amid growing demand for AI-assisted coding, Microsoft said GitHub grew its user base 4x in the past year to 15 million, and CEO Satya Nadella said at Meta’s LlamaCon event this week that between 20% and 30% of the company’s code base is now AI-generated.
Meanwhile, Meta announced this week that it will be launching a new Meta AI app, powered by its latest Llama 4 model, to compete more directly with consumer AI platforms like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he envisions eventually including ads or product recommendations in this app, but likely not for several months, at least.
“I expect that we’re going to be largely focused on scaling and deepening engagement for at least the next year, before we’ll really be ready to start building out the business here,” Zuckerberg said.
Share prices for Microsoft and Meta each got a boost from their respective earnings reports this week.