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This earnings season, all eyes are on cloud revenue growth

AI computing demand is generating huge revenue streams for hyperscalers, but the market is closely watching the pace of growth, which is slowing.

Jon Keegan

10/28/25 12:47PM

This week, we’ll get an update on how many billions the cloud giants pulled in last quarter. AI has created an insatiable hunger for more cloud computing, and Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are racing to serve up computing capacity as fast as they can build the massive new data centers needed to catch up with demand.

As a result, the tens of billions of revenue that these tech titans are pulling in keeps going up.

At the same time, their customers are struggling to figure out a viable business model for the AI services they’re developing, and chatter about a possible AI bubble is getting louder.

That means as these tech giants report earnings this week, investors will be scrutinizing more closely how much money these cloud computing businesses are generating, and comparing the pace of growth.

Last quarter, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy tried to explain his company’s AWS cloud unit’s relatively slow revenue growth of 17.5% to analysts, saying that a small number of huge customers tend to spend in bursts, which will result in uneven growth. But overall, Jassy was bullish on the cost- and energy-efficient Trainium chips that Amazon is filling its data centers with.

Microsoft will update investors on Azure’s growth, its flagship cloud business and part of the “intelligent cloud” unit, which includes public, private, and hybrid server products and cloud services. Last quarter, Azure had revenue growth that was the envy of the industry, increasing 39% year on year. There was so much demand, the company had a backlog of $368 billion in signed contracts.

While smaller than Amazon or Microsoft, Google Cloud revenue grew a healthy 31.7% year on year. Google has recently been pitching its own custom chips to customers, putting it head-to-head with Nvidia.

Jon Keegan23h

Judge blocks Pentagon’s move to blacklist Anthropic

A federal judge in Northern California has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk.

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.

Rani Molla24h

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

SpaceX’s impending IPO could raise $40 billion to $80 billion and rank as the largest ever — as well as one of the most unconventional.

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.

Exclusive | The SpaceX IPO Will Be Just as Unconventional as Musk Himself

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.

Rani Molla3/26/26

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.)

The toughest AI benchmark just got a whole lot tougher

ARC-AGI-3 is the latest version of a clever benchmark that challenges AI models to solve mini video games with no written instructions.

Jon Keegan3/26/26

Rani Molla3/26/26

The US leads the world in robotaxi deployments

Every day it seems another robotaxi launches somewhere in the world. But most of them are in the US.

Of the 171 active robotaxi deployments globally, 69 — or 40% — are in the US, according to a new report from the Bank of America Institute. China, the next largest market, accounts for 24% of deployments.

Most of those deployments are still in testing or early commercial stages. Only 10 US cities currently have fully commercial robotaxi operations, defined as services that operate on public roads, carry paying passengers, run fully driverless without a safety driver, and function all day in any weather.

For now, that effectively refers to Alphabet’s Waymo, which operates commercially in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio, and the San Francisco Bay Area. That definition excludes competitors like Tesla, whose Robotaxi service uses safety monitors, and Amazon’s Zoox, which has yet to charge customers for rides.