bbc_business

Three things we learned about AI from Big Tech earnings

📰 source: bbc_business · 💼 business

big tech earnings season wrapped with a clear theme: everyone is spending huge on ai, but investors want actual money back. alphabet's free cash flow went negative for the first time ever on $118bn revenue. meta squeezed out just $784m free cash on $61bn revenue, and its reality labs unit lost nearly $9bn in the first half.

wall street punished meta hard — shares hit their second lowest level in a year after zuckerberg talked about building an ai agent and selling ai tools to other firms, with no timeline or product. meta still raised its spending floor to $140bn+ for the year. microsoft, meanwhile, saw shares hit a six-month high despite planning to match its $190bn ai spend, because its core ai tool is seeing adoption. amazon also rose despite a $220bn ai budget, boosted by other businesses.

but the underlying demand is real. google said 950m people use gemini monthly, triple last year. apple's new macs and iphones are selling better than expected — so well it can't get enough chips. and apple plans to charge for heavy siri use, with tim cook saying they're 'off-the-charts excited' about siri ai.

why it matters: ai spending is ballooning at big tech, and investors are shifting from hype to demanding actual revenue from those bets.

source: bbc_business
sentiment: +0.10 · impact: 0.60

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Surprise fall in US jobs last month as slow summer continues

Homes are selling below asking in 38 of the 50 biggest U.S. cities—if you can afford one

China is gaining ground in AI. But the U.S. still has a major advantage

US strikes $1.2bn deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects