Overview
- Microsoft’s fiscal Q4 beat expectations driven by 43% Azure growth and management’s accounting change that cut reported 2026 capex to about $175 billion, a result that helped the stock record an unprecedented single‑day market‑value gain.
- Amazon delivered a blowout Q2 with AWS growth near 36–37%, completed a large OpenAI funding tranche, and raised 2026 capital‑spending guidance into the low‑hundreds of billions, triggering a major one‑day surge in its market value.
- Meta raised its 2026 capex outlook toward roughly $130 billion while free cash flow collapsed sharply, and investors reacted by punishing the stock for heavy AI spending without clear near‑term returns.
- The market moves exposed secondary strains: an AI‑focused hedge fund was reported forced to liquidate positions after margin calls and AI‑themed crypto tokens showed little benefit from the equity rally.
- Analysts now warn that combined AI infrastructure spending across cloud and platform firms will total hundreds of billions in 2026 and investors will watch closely to see if that spending converts into sustained free cash flow, stresses GPU supply, or pressures credit metrics.