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AI Love you

Big Tech’s big AI love affair — in quotes

AI is the apple of tech’s eye.

8/8/25 9:27AM

Big Tech’s love affair with AI saw no signs of faltering during the latest earnings season. Combined, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft spent a record of nearly $90 billion on capex last quarter and have promised even bigger spending in the future.

To justify those mammoth expenses, their CEOs spent their earnings releases and calls extolling the virtues of AI and how it’s contributing to their top and bottom lines.

Here’s what they had to say.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy
Mentions of “AI” on earnings call: 39

“Our AI progress across the board continues to improve our customer experiences, speed of innovation, operational efficiency, and business growth, and I’m excited for what lies ahead.”

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
Mentions of “AI” on earnings call: 86

“Q2 was a standout quarter for us with robust growth across the company. As you saw at I/O, we are leading at the frontier of AI and shipping at an incredible pace. AI is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
Mentions of “AI” on earnings call: 51

“It was a very strong close to what was a record fiscal year for us... The rate of innovation and the speed of diffusion is unlike anything we have seen. To that end, we are building the most comprehensive suite of AI products and tech stack at massive scale.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Mentions of “AI” on earnings call: 72

“On advertising, the strong performance this quarter is largely thanks to AI unlocking greater efficiency and gains across our ad system... AI is significantly improving our ability to show people content that they’re going to find interesting and useful.”

Even Apple, which historically has lagged far behind its Big Tech peers in AI spending, committed to opening up its giant wallet for AI.

Apple CEO Tim Cook
Mentions of “AI” on earnings call: 26

“We see AI as one of the most profound technologies of our lifetime. We are embedding it across our devices and platforms and across the company. We are also significantly growing our investments.”

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Anthropic raises $30 billion, now valued at $380 billion

Anthropic is now valued at $380 billion, after closing on its latest round of fundraising, taking in $30 billion from a wide range of investors. The Series G round was co-led by D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, and the UAE’s investment arm, MGX.

Some other investors include: Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, JPMorgan Chase, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Microsoft, and Nvidia.

Anthropic offered a few details on the current state of its business:

Anthropic said that its annual run-rate revenue has reached $14 billion, seeing 10x growth each of the past three years.
“The number of customers spending over $100,000 annually on Claude (as represented by run-rate revenue) has grown 7x in the past year.”
“Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has grown to over $2.5 billion; this figure has more than doubled since the beginning of 2026.”
Business subscriptions to Claude Code have quadrupled since the start of 2026.

In a blog post announcing the round, the company said:

“We train and run Claude on a diversified range of AI hardware — AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and NVIDIA GPUs — which means we can match workloads to the chips best suited for them. This diversity of platforms translates to better performance and greater resilience for the enterprise customers that depend on Claude for critical work.”

Anthropic raises $30 billion in Series G funding at $380 billion post-money valuation

Anthropic offered a few details on the current state of its business:

Anthropic said that its annual run-rate revenue has reached $14 billion, seeing 10x growth each of the past three years.
“The number of customers spending over $100,000 annually on Claude (as represented by run-rate revenue) has grown 7x in the past year.”
“Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has grown to over $2.5 billion; this figure has more than doubled since the beginning of 2026.”
Business subscriptions to Claude Code have quadrupled since the start of 2026.

In a blog post announcing the round, the company said:

“We train and run Claude on a diversified range of AI hardware — AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and NVIDIA GPUs — which means we can match workloads to the chips best suited for them. This diversity of platforms translates to better performance and greater resilience for the enterprise customers that depend on Claude for critical work.”

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Apple’s smartphone market share is growing in China

Apple is starting 2026 strong in China.

After staging a comeback last year as consumers flocked to the iPhone 17 lineup, the US company is continuing to gain ground.

Apple’s iPhones accounted for 19% of smartphone sales in China in January, up from 14% a year earlier, according to Counterpoint Research. That marks Apple’s highest January market share in five years, putting it just a fraction of a percentage point behind market leader Huawei.

Last quarter, Greater China revenue made up about 18% of Apple’s total sales as it remains an important region for the company.

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Waymo CEO Tekedra Mawakana says she thinks the company could reach 1 million weekly paid autonomous rides this year, Bloomberg reports. That would be more than double the roughly 400,000 weekly rides the Alphabet subsidiary is currently providing after quadrupling service in 2025.

The company plans to get there by adding new vehicle models to its fleet and expanding into additional markets this year, including Washington, Detroit, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Denver. Waymo currently operates in six cities, having expanded to Miami in January, and has more than 2,500 fully driverless vehicles on the road.

Its biggest competitor, Tesla, says it is operating about 500 robotaxis, which for the most part have human drivers, in two markets: Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Russia blocks Meta’s WhatsApp, the country’s most popular messaging app

The Russian government has fully blocked Meta’s WhatsApp, the country’s most popular messaging app, over what a Kremlin spokesman called the company’s “unwillingness to comply with Russian law.” In a statement, Meta said WhatsApp has more than 100 million users in the country, which would represent two-thirds of the Russian population.

While this represents a major disruption for Russian users, it’s unlikely to be financially devastating for Meta.

The company does not break out revenue from Russia, but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Meta has been labeled an “extremist organization” in Russia, and advertising on its platforms has been banned.

Meta called the move a “backwards step” that “can only lead to less safety for people in Russia.”

Russia fully blocks WhatsApp, talks up state-backed alternative