Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Snapchat’s CEO for France Gregory Gazagne (Joel Saget/Getty Images)

Price check

Snap’s ad revenue isn’t growing as fast as its peers

An ad price snafu was partly to blame.

8/6/25 7:57AM

Snap’s stock plunged after narrowly missing earnings expectations yesterday. One reason investors are disappointed: ad revenue growth was a lot slower than the company’s tech and social media peers — even those like Meta, whose ad revenue is about 40x the size.

Shares are trading down over 20% in early trading on Wednesday.

Snap ad revenue grew just 4% in the second quarter, compared with a year earlier — less than it the 9% it grew in the previous quarter. The company partly blamed an ad pricing snafu for the slowed growth.

“Unfortunately, in our efforts to improve advertiser performance, we shipped a change that caused some campaigns to clear the auction at substantially reduced prices,” the company wrote in its investor letter. “We have since reverted this change and advertising revenue growth has improved as advertisers adjust their bid strategies to achieve their objectives.”

During the earnings call, the company’s CFO, Derek Andersen, also pointed to the timing of Ramadan, “which was less of a benefit in Q2 than in the prior year,” as well as the end of the de minimis exemption.

Like pretty much every other tech company, Snap is hoping its investments in AI will help it make more money on ads, which are responsible for the lion’s share of its revenue.

Here’s CEO Evan Spiegel on the earnings call:

“Looking ahead, we see significant opportunities to further enhance return on advertising spend by deepening our investments in AI and machine learning, delivering innovative ad formats across the entire funnel, and enhancing the tools and insights that help our advertising partners optimize their campaigns. These ongoing efforts are aimed at ensuring Snapchat remains a high-performing and increasingly automated platform for all of our advertising partners.”

But so far it’s having trouble keeping up with everyone else.

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Report: OpenAI may tailor a version of ChatGPT for UAE that prohibits LGBTQ+ content

In June of last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared in Abu Dhabi, UAE, alongside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to announce “Stargate UAE,” a project that includes a 1-gigawatt AI data center in Abu Dhabi, and a commitment to invest in the Stargate USA project.

OpenAI has announced that it is interested in jumping on the “sovereign AI” train, helping countries roll out their own AI services that reflect their own language, culture, and version of history.

Today, Semafor is reporting that OpenAI is in talks to develop a tailored version of ChatGPT for the UAE that would align with the kingdom’s conservative social laws and speech restrictions, such as disallowing discussion of LGBTQ+ content. The UAE-owned MGX investment firm is an investor in OpenAI.

The company announced its OpenAI for Countries initiative in May of last year, which aims to “help interested governments build sovereign AI capability in coordination with the U.S. government — rooted in democratic values, open markets, and trusted partnerships.”

The UAE is a monarchy with a history of human rights violations.

OpenAI’s plan for “democratic AI”

The UAE is a monarchy with a history of human rights violations.

Allen & Co Brings Together Media And Tech Titans In Sun Valley

Analysts think Amazon’s sky-high capex is a good thing, even if there’s “shock value” for investors

That said, several analysts also lowered their price targets for Amazon the day after its downbeat earnings report.

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Big Tech’s $1.1 trillion cloud computing backlog

Now that the big dogs of cloud computing have all reported their quarterly earnings, we can step back and get a sense of the searing demand that AI is driving toward their businesses.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each reported hundreds of billions in RPO (remaining performance obligations) — signed contracts for cloud computing services that can’t yet be filled and haven’t yet hit the books.

Collectively, the big three cloud providers reported a $1.1 TRILLION backlog of revenue.

This gargantuan demand could be good news for the “neoscalers” like CoreWeave and Nebius. But even CoreWeave is reporting a substantial backlog of its own — $55 billion last quarter.

Rani Molla

Apple of another’s AI

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Apple is the only Big Tech company whose capex declined last quarter

One of these companies is not like the others.

Apple Headquarters in Cupertino of California

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Big Tech capital expenditure soared in 2025. It’s going up another 50% in 2026.

Last quarter was one for the record books when it came to Big Tech’s purchases of property and equipment. Combined, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta spent nearly $400 billion on capex, sans leases, in total last year, mostly in service of building out the AI infrastructure that they hope will furnish their futures.

And 2026 is only getting more expensive.

The four are expected to spend 50% more in 2026 than in 2025: roughly $600 billion. Amazon said it’s on the hook for $200 billion in capex this year, while Google expects to spend between $175 billion and $185 billion. Not too far behind, Meta estimated its 2026 capex would be $115 billion to $135 billion. Microsoft didn’t give an estimate, but analysts have its 2026 calendar year capex at around $114 billion. However, it should be noted that analysts’ expectations for 2026 were way lower than the reality for the rest.