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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 10:27AM

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.”

Claire Yubin Oh

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Judge blocks Pentagon’s move to blacklist Anthropic

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The ruling temporarily prevents the Defense Department from restricting the AI company’s access to federal contracts amid a dispute over its refusal to allow certain military and surveillance uses of its technology. The designation could also have shifted lucrative government work toward competitors, including OpenAI.

Earlier this month, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, sued 17 federal agencies and their heads, alleging the government exceeded its statutory authority.

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Report: SpaceX’s record IPO may grant preferential access to retail investors and Tesla shareholders

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The Wall Street Journal reports several ways CEO Elon Musk is considering breaking with IPO norms:

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

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Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

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Tesla released estimates for Q1 deliveries and they’re lower than analysts expected

Ahead of first-quarter earnings next month, Tesla released its own company-compiled Wall Street consensus estimate for deliveries: 365,645 vehicles. While that’s lower than the 382,000 FactSet consensus estimate, it represents a nearly 9% jump from Q1 2025, when Tesla sold 336,681 vehicles.

Tesla started releasing its own consensus estimates to the public — not just institutional investors — for the first time in Q4 2025. The move was seen as a way to temper investor expectations, as other estimates were too high. Last quarter, Tesla’s compilation was closer to actual numbers, which fell 16% year over year.

The market-implied odds from event contracts suggest 64% of traders think Tesla’s Q1 deliveries will be more than 350,000, 44% think it will be higher than 360,000, and just 21% have it at higher than 370,000.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

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