The big story in Big Tech has been just how much they’re spending on capex to furnish their AI futures. Not only are Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft spending more than ever, they’re also spending more than they said they would just a quarter earlier. In total, their 2026 capital expenditure bill is now slated to surge beyond $700 billion.

Apple, by contrast, continues to take a different approach. The company has lagged peers in developing its own frontier AI models and has leaned more on partnerships. The strategy certainly doesn’t seem to be hurting Apple yet. The company posted record revenue in the March quarter that beat analysts’ expectations this week, even without a robust AI offering.

Apple’s capex actually fell in the March quarter. Its payments for acquisition of property, plant, and equipment totaled about $1.9 billion in its fiscal second quarter, down 36% from roughly $3 billion a year earlier. So on a year-over-year basis, Apple’s capex declined while everyone else’s jumped sharply.

Estée Lauder shares are soaring after the beauty giant released Q3 earnings results that topped expectations and raised its full-year outlook, while also expanding its restructuring plan.

The key numbers:

• Revenue of $3.71 billion (compared to analysts’ estimate of $3.69 billion).

• Adjusted earnings per share of $0.91 (estimate: $0.65).

Estée Lauder also lifted its full-year earnings outlook to a range of $2.35 to $2.45 per share, up from $2.05 to $2.25 previously.

The bottom line is getting flattered by job cuts, with management increasing that target to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a prior range of 5,800 to 7,000, as part of a broader effort to streamline operations and shift toward faster-growing sales channels.

The rally comes after a tough stretch for the stock, which is down more than 20% year to date, with the results inspiring hope that its turnaround efforts will bear fruit.

CEO Stéphane de La Faverie said fiscal 2026 is “promising to be the pivotal year we intended,” with the company expecting to restore organic sales growth and expand margins for the first time in four years.

Amid these positive signals, Estée Lauder flagged risks from tariffs, geopolitical tensions, and potential disruptions tied to the Middle East.

Moderna rose in premarket trading after it reported earnings results that beat Wall Street expectations and reaffirmed its full-year guidance.

For the first three months of 2026, the company reported:

• An adjusted loss per share of $3.40, less than the $4.45 loss per share analysts polled by FactSet had expected.

• Revenue of $352 million, more than the $236 million the Street was anticipating. About 80% of that came from outside the US, the company said.

For the full year in 2026, the company still expects:

• Revenue to grow 10%. Currently, analysts are penciling in $2 billion in 2026 sales, which is about a 5% increase.

Moderna was tapped by the US government to quickly develop a vaccine for COVID-19 in 2020, a product that has seen its sales plummet, but remains the company’s main source of revenue.

Now, the company sees growth on the horizon this year, after the European Commission approved its combination vaccine for the flu and COVID-19 for adults ‌50 years and older. Indeed, Moderna said a growing share of its revenue is coming from international markets.

The company has had a harder time getting approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, though the agency said in February that it would reconsider its stand-alone flu vaccine.

Chevron is modestly lower after posting mixed Q1 results, as investors wonder whether elevated oil prices and crack spreads will continue to buoy earnings in the quarters to come.

The key numbers:

• Q1 revenue of $48.6 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $50.6 billion).

• Adjusted earnings per share of $1.41 (estimate: $0.90).

• Production of 3.86 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (estimate: 3.8 million).

The upside surprise in Chevron’s upstream (production) business more than offset underwhelming results in its downstream (refined) division.

Friday’s dip comes with Chevron outperforming most of the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund as of 10:36 a.m. ET, with tumbling West Texas Intermediate futures weighing on energy stocks.

Chevron said earnings would have been better if not for “unfavorable timing effects” totaling about $2.9 billion, which included mark-to-market losses on derivatives and inventory accounting impacts, weighing on reported earnings.

“Despite heightened geopolitical volatility and related supply disruptions, Chevron delivered solid first-quarter performance,” CEO Mike Wirth said, citing strong US operations and production growth following the integration of Hess.

Ahead of these results, Chevron had also cautioned that supply may take time to respond to higher prices. Wirth also said in a CBS interview that restoring production is “not like turning on a faucet,” noting it can take “weeks and months, in some cases years” to bring disrupted fields and infrastructure back online.

The results also come as Wirth met with President Trump and other energy executives this Tuesday to discuss potential steps to stabilize oil markets in the event that shipments through the Strait of Hormuz remain limited.

Exxon rose early Friday after reporting better-than-expected first-quarter results as increased oil production in Guyana helped offset disruptions in the Middle East.

The largest US energy company by revenue reported:

• Q1 revenue of $85.1 billion vs. analysts’ $81.13 billion consensus expectation, per FactSet.

• Adjusted earnings per share of $1.16 vs. the $0.98 analysts had predicted, according to FactSet. That was down from $1.76 a year earlier.

• Global production of 4.6 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, roughly in line with Wall Street expectations. Guyana set a new quarterly production record of more than 900,000 gross barrels of oil per day, the company said.

Exxon Mobil had previously flagged that the Mideast war would disrupt its operations. In an SEC filing in April, the company reported that operations in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — which accounted for roughly 20% of its energy production in 2025 — had been upended by the war, saying that it expected the disruptions would cut energy production by roughly 6% in the first quarter, compared to Q4 2025.

Atlassian shares skyrocketed 23% in premarket trading on Friday after the embattled workflow software firm hiked its FY2026 guidance and reported better-than-expected revenue and profit results for its fiscal third quarter.

For the quarter ended March 31, 2026, the company reported:

• Revenue of $1.79 billion, up 32% year over year and topping Wall Street expectations of $1.695 billion (compiled by Bloomberg).

• Adjusted earnings per share of $1.75 per share, more than 30% ahead of analyst estimates for $1.34 of adjusted earnings.

CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes noted, “Our strong Q3 results show the power of our strategy in action, with total revenue growing 32% year-over-year to $1.8 billion, as customers sign bigger, longer-term commitments, and connect their teams and workflows on our AI-powered platform.” The company also hiked the outlook for its 2026 fiscal year, ending June 30. Atlassian now expects:

• Total year-over-year revenue growth to be approximately 24%, up from the 22% expected in the previous quarter.

• Higher revenue growth for its key businesses, with its Cloud segment now expected to grow 26.5%, Data Center 21.5%, and Marketplace and Other 6.5%, compared to the year before.

The latest jump is a sigh of relief not only for Atlassian — which has seen its shares fall more than 50% in 2026 — but also the wider software complex at large, which has been under relentless pressure from an AI-spooked sell-off in recent months. While this certainly won’t kill the “SAASpocalypse” thesis altogether — the idea that the moat of software businesses will disappear in an age of vibe coding — it may blunt some of the concerns, or at the very least push the timeline of any anticipated disruption back a few quarters.

Strong earnings from Five9, and even Reddit, are also helping the software landscape this morning, with a number of high-profile SaaS (software-as-a-service) stocks in the green, including Hubspot, GitLab, Workday, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Figma.

Earlier in March, Atlassian announced it was laying off about one-tenth of its staff “to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales, while strengthening our financial profile.”

The conditions of SpaceX’s pay package for founder Elon Musk were revealed in a confidential registration statement, which was reviewed by Reuters last week.

While the compensation plan, approved by the SpaceX board in January, includes a sky-high valuation target of $7.5 trillion, it turns out Musk will only be awarded 200 million in super-voting restricted shares if he also establishes a ​permanent human colony on Mars with more than a million people, according to excerpts from the statement.

The bitcoin miner turned data center operator released first-quarter earnings that surpassed expectations for revenue. Shares built on strong gains from Thursday’s session in after-hours trading following the results.

Riot Platforms reported:

• Q1 revenue of $167.2 million, growing 3.6% from the same quarter a year ago and surpassing analysts’ expectations of $131 million.

• A diluted loss per share of $1.44, much worse than analysts’ consensus estimate of a $0.72 loss, which includes unrealized loss on its bitcoin holdings.

The bulk of company’s revenue stems from its bitcoin mining activity, which made up $111.9 million in the quarter, while its data center housing revenue stood at $33.2 million, per its press release.

The first quarter of 2026 marks an inflection point for Riot. CFO Jason Chung said on Thursday in the firm’s Q1 earnings conference call, “With the delivery of our first 5 megawatts to AMD this quarter, Riot is now an active data center operator, and for the first time, our top line now includes contracted lease revenue from an investment-grade tenant.”

The earnings report comes the same week the company announced amending its $200 million credit agreement with Coinbase by replacing a floating interest rate with a fixed rate, according to an SEC filing dated on Monday.

Social media platform Reddit climbed late Thursday after guiding for stronger sales in the current quarter and posting Q1 numbers that were better than analysts had expected. Reddit reported:

• Q1 earnings per share of $1.01 vs. analysts’ expectations of $0.57.

• Revenue of $663.4 million vs. expectations for $607.7 million.

• 126.8 million “daily active uniques” vs. the 125.9 million expected.

• Sales guidance for Q2 2026 of between $715 million and $725 million (midpoint $720 million) vs. analysts’ estimates of $710.9 million.

After surging 40% last year, Reddit has struggled since last September, when it hit a record closing high of $270.71. The stock closed Thursday roughly 45% below that level.

The drop is not so much because the outlook for sales and earnings at the company have weakened dramatically. (In fact, Wall Street analysts have lifted their sales estimates for the next 12 months by about 30% since then, and raised earnings estimates by about 70%.)

It’s that the price-to-earnings multiple on the stock has plunged from over 90x expected earnings over the next 12 months to about 32x, suggesting that sentiment around the stock — which had been something of a favorite for retail traders last year — has ebbed significantly.