Main developments
Meta raised its forecast for capital expenditure in 2026 to $125bn-$145bn as it spends heavily on AI, sending its shares more than 6 per cent lower in after-hours trading.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the increase was because of higher component costs, “particularly memory pricing”.
Google’s net income surged 81 per cent, propelled by a strong performance in its search business and a 63 per cent jump in its cloud computing revenue. Its shares gained more than 6 per cent.
The company lifted its capex forecast for this year to as much as $190bn and said it would rise further in 2027.
Microsoft said capex would reach $190bn for the 2026 calendar year.
Its Azure cloud business reported a 40 per cent increase in revenue, helping to push Microsoft’s total sales to a record $82.9bn.
Amazon reported better than expected results, as growth in its cloud unit and retail operations topped forecasts. Its shares were almost 3 per cent higher.
Google plans to sell its AI chips in challenge to Nvidia
Google is planning to sell servers kitted out with its in-house AI chips to outside customers, replicating a strategy from semiconductor giant Nvidia.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, told investors that the company would “begin to deliver” its TPU chips to customers to run in their own data centres, marking a shift from its current practice of renting out chips hosted in Google’s own facilities.
“We will begin to deliver TPUs to a select group of customers in their own data centres in a hardware configuration to expand our addressable market opportunity,” he said.
Amazon chief Andy Jassy earlier told investors that he was expecting the group to also “sell racks [of chips] over the next couple of years”.
In his annual shareholder letter earlier this month, he wrote that Amazon’s chips business was on course to generate $20bn in annual revenue but would have generated $50bn had it sold them rather than rented capacity.
Microsoft expects Azure cloud business to gather pace
Microsoft forecast an acceleration in the company’s Azure cloud business this year.
Chief financial officer Amy Hood said the unit was expected to grow 39 to 40 per cent year on year in the June quarter on a constant currency basis, compared with 39 per cent in the quarter ending in March.
She added Azure growth would moderately accelerate in the second half of the calendar year compared with the first half.