Last week was like Christmas morning for tech nerds – five of the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants dropped their earnings reports, and boy, did we get some surprises under the tree.
Here’s the scorecard that had Wall Street doing double-takes:
Google (Alphabet) came out swinging with a 35% earnings jump and 16% revenue boost. Translation? They absolutely demolished expectations like they were playing earnings on easy mode.
Amazon wasn’t messing around either – 36% earnings growth and 13% more revenue than last year. Jeff Bezos might be in space, but his company is still very much grounded in making money.
Apple did what Apple does – steady, reliable growth with 13% earnings increase and 8% sales bump. Not flashy, but hey, when you’re already printing money, why get fancy?
Meta had a bit of a “whoops” moment. Revenue was up a solid 26%, but a one-time tax charge made their earnings look like they got hit by a truck. The stock took a nosedive faster than your portfolio during a market crash.
Microsoft posted respectable numbers – 18% growth in both earnings and revenue, beating estimates. Sounds good on paper, right? Well, here’s where it gets interesting…
The Plot Twist Nobody Saw Coming
While everyone was celebrating these stellar numbers, there’s a darker subplot brewing that’s about as subtle as a brick through a window: layoffs. Lots of them.
Amazon just “talent remixed” (corporate speak for “fired”) about 14,000 people to “reduce bureaucracy.” Intel is cutting up to 25,000 jobs because, surprise, they’re struggling in the AI game. Even Meta trimmed 600 jobs from their AI unit – apparently even AI companies need to streamline their AI efforts. The irony is thicker than a Silicon Valley startup pitch deck.
Here’s the kicker: over 100,000 tech jobs got axed in 2025 alone. And it’s not just tech – Starbucks cut 1,100 corporate roles (guess they’re brewing cost savings instead of coffee), and Procter & Gamble is trimming 7,000 white-collar positions.
Why Google Won and Microsoft… Well, Didn’t
So what made Google the clear winner while Microsoft felt more like a participation trophy? It comes down to execution in the AI race.
Google’s been playing chess while others are playing checkers. Their AI integration across search, cloud, and advertising is paying off in cold, hard cash. They’re not just talking about AI – they’re monetizing it like pros.
Microsoft, despite solid numbers, is facing the classic “great expectations” problem. When you’re the company that everyone expects to dominate AI (thanks to that little ChatGPT partnership), just being “good” feels like underperforming. Plus, their cloud growth, while strong, isn’t accelerating fast enough to justify the AI hype train they’ve been conducting.
The Bigger Picture (Spoiler: It’s Complicated)
Here’s what’s really happening: we’re witnessing what some are calling “The Economic Singularity” – the moment when technology starts eating traditional jobs faster than a college student demolishes free pizza.
Companies are posting record profits while simultaneously cutting thousands of jobs. It’s like they’ve figured out how to have their cake, eat it too, and then fire the baker. The math is simple: AI and automation are making human workers as obsolete as flip phones.
The uncomfortable truth? Some people are going to get incredibly rich from this shift, while others are going to get left behind faster than last season’s iPhone case.
So what’s an investor to do? Pay attention to which companies are actually making money from AI (hello, Google) versus those just riding the hype wave. Because when the music stops, you want to be holding shares in the companies that built the speakers, not the ones just dancing to the beat.
The AI revolution isn’t coming – it’s here, it’s profitable, and it’s reshaping everything faster than you can say “machine learning.” The question isn’t whether this trend will continue, but whether you’ll be smart enough to profit from it.