Google Cloud and AWS Shine in Big Tech's Quarterly Update

It was the Super Bowl of quarterly tech earnings today, with March-quarter results from Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms. The tsunami of numbers, all released within a few minutes of each other, might overwhelm even a top AI model. But for a human, what was clear was that surging demand for AI computing capacity is lifting cloud revenue growth across the industry. One wet blanket, though: Much of the computing demand is likely coming from the biggest AI firms, like Anthropic and OpenAI, so perhaps we shouldn’t get too excited. 

As Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said, “It’s no secret that…the AI labs are spending an incredible amount of money on compute.” He added, though, that there’s also a fair bit of regular business demand for AI, which is of course vital if the AI revolution is to pay for itself. Meanwhile, the results also showed that AI technologies are boosting the ad businesses at ad giants Meta and Google. That’s the good news.