Rare Same-Day Earnings Releases from the 'Tech Four Horsemen' - Understand the Key Points in One Article

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, the four major tech giants, released their earnings reports on Wednesday, all exceeding Wall Street's expectations, but the market reacted very differently.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported a Q1 revenue of $109.9 billion and EPS of $5.11, both exceeding expectations. The most eye-catching figure is Google Cloud's revenue growth of 63% year-over-year.

After the market closed, Alphabet stood out with a stock price surge of up to 7%. In contrast, the market reactions to the other three tech giants were disappointing. Meta's stock fell nearly 7%, while Amazon and Microsoft showed slight strength.

Recently, the major US stock indexes have been hovering at historical highs, but the market also faces multiple pressures such as the Iran war, rising oil prices, and weak consumer confidence, investors keep a high sensitivity to every move of the "Seven Tech Titans".

Google Cloud Exceeds Expectations with Accelerated Growth, AI Full-Stack Advantage Receives Market Pricing

The strong performance of Google Cloud is the core driver pushing Alphabet's stock price up.

The 63% year-over-year revenue growth far exceeded expectations, and for the first time in this quarter, enterprise AI solutions drove cloud business growth, with customers developing intelligent agent applications on the Gemini platform in large numbers.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said, "The start of 2026 is extremely bright," and emphasized that Google is currently the only service provider that covers the full stack of enterprise AI.

Google's self-developed Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) has achieved cost-effectiveness internally, and the company stated in the earnings call that they plan to offer chip products that can be deployed in their own data centers to customers soon.

Driven by AI demand and TPU hardware sales, Google Cloud's order backlog nearly doubled quarter-over-quarter to $462 billion.

Increase in Capital Expenditure Did Not Trigger Concerns, Profit Visibility is Key

Alphabet announced an increase in its full-year capital expenditure guidance from the original $175 billion to $185 billion to between $180 billion and $190 billion, implying that capital expenditure in 2027 is expected to "significantly increase".

The market interpreted this as a necessary investment for continued growth, but this attitude is in stark contrast to the market's reaction to Meta.

Meta released its 2026 capital expenditure guidance, further increased from the original $115 billion to $135 billion, to between $125 billion and $145 billion, and its stock price fell nearly 7% as a result.

The key difference is: Alphabet's expenditure expansion is backed by strong cloud business revenue growth and a large order backlog, while Meta does not have a cloud computing business segment for external sales, making the commercial return logic of AI investment more difficult to quantify.

Direxion Capital Markets Director Jake Behan wrote in a report:

The market questions Meta's spending, while Alphabet's investment is recognized because it is supported by a $4.6 trillion order backlog.

SWBC Chief Investment Officer Chris Brigati pointed out in a report to customers:

Each company faces its own dynamics, but delivering tangible