{"id":436999,"date":"2026-01-27T18:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T18:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/436999\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T18:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T18:49:10","slug":"big-tech-earnings-to-test-ai-rally-as-resurgent-alphabet-takes-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/436999\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Tech earnings to test AI rally as resurgent Alphabet takes lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft (MSFT-Q<\/a>) and Meta (META-Q<\/a>) will kick off Big Tech earnings this week under pressure to prove that their costly bets \u200bon artificial intelligence can power another year of strong growth \u200das a resurgent Alphabet (GOOGL-Q<\/a>) takes the lead in the high-stakes race.<\/p>\n

The companies, along with Amazon (AMZN-Q<\/a>), are expected to lift their AI spending by 30 per cent to more than US$500-billion this year, an unprecedented outlay that will sharpen investor scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Doubts have deepened whether Microsoft has squandered \u200da first-mover \u200badvantage in AI it secured through its OpenAI investment. Meta too is on the hook to show payoffs from its expensive push into superintelligence.<\/p>\n

Both stocks declined more than 6 per cent in the last three months of 2025, while Amazon notched a small 5.1-per-cent gain after its November deal with OpenAI signaled that the largest cloud-computing provider in the U.S. was no longer an AI laggard.<\/p>\n

Alphabet shares, though, surged about 29 per cent in that \u2060period, following a strong reception of Google\u2019s latest Gemini 3 model. The company also recently struck a deal to power Apple\u2019s revamped Siri.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlphabet has the upper hand in the AI race as investors recognize that proprietary ecosystems, such as Apple and Search in Google, are tough to penetrate,\u201d said David Wagner, head of equities at Aptus Capital Advisors, a Big Tech investor.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike in the internet boom, the first-mover advantage doesn\u2019t always \u200cwin the marathon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft and Meta will \u200dreport earnings on Wednesday, while Alphabet and Amazon report next week.<\/p>\n

In the October-December quarter, Google Cloud revenue \u200dgrowth likely quickened to 35 per cent from 33.5 per cent in the previous three months, \u200caccording to LSEG.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s Azure is expected to post a 38.8-per-cent rise, slower than the 40-per-cent jump \u2060it reported in the preceding quarter. Amazon Web Services likely grew 21.1 per cent, up from 20.2 per cent in the prior period.<\/p>\n

Still, doubts linger about the real-world benefits \u200bfor the businesses adopting the technology, feeding into bubble fears that hounded the technology industry for much of last year.<\/p>\n

More than half the respondents in a PwC survey of 4,454 CEOs earlier this month said they realized neither revenue nor cost benefits from investments in AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor this not to be a bubble by definition, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread,\u201d Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella \u200bsaid at Davos.<\/p>\n

Morgan Stanley analysts said sentiment toward Microsoft has shifted to \u201ca wall of worry\u201d due to growing competition for Azure and OpenAI, in which the company has a 27-per-cent stake.<\/p>\n

Microsoft has said it is battling AI capacity constraints which it says are expected to last at least until June. As well, a surge in memory chip prices has dampened the outlook for the PC market, a critical driver for Microsoft\u2019s personal computing business that houses Windows and Xbox consoles.<\/p>\n

Overall, its revenue likely rose 15.3 per cent to US$80.27-billion in the October-December period, the \u2060slowest growth in three quarters.<\/p>\n

Alphabet is expected to benefit from rapid AI integration into search and a stable \u2060advertising market, with the company expected to report a 15.5-per-cent jump in revenue to US$111.37-billion.<\/p>\n

It also opened up a new revenue stream in October by agreeing to \u200csupply Anthropic – an AI startup it backs – with its AI chips called Tensor Processing Units. The deal, worth tens of billions of dollars, is a departure from Alphabet\u2019s strategy of reserving these chips for internal use.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s efforts to improve ad search and recommendations with AI, meanwhile, are expected to have powered a 20.6-per-cent rise in revenue to US$58.35-billion. But an expensive hiring spree for top AI talent is expected to slow profit growth to a near three-year low.<\/p>\n

Amazon \u200cis expected to post a 12.5-per-cent rise in revenue, slightly slower than the preceding quarter as growth weakens at its North America retail business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft (MSFT-Q) and Meta (META-Q) will kick off Big Tech earnings this week under pressure to prove that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-436999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}