The three biggest names in cloud computing just dropped earnings that reminded Wall Street why AI isn’t a buzzword anymore. Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta all reported results in late July 2026. Microsoft’s stock jumped roughly 9% in after-hours trading on July 29. Amazon climbed over 5%. Meta, despite posting strong numbers, watched its shares tumble nearly 10%.

The numbers behind the AI arms race

Microsoft’s fiscal Q4 2026 results were the headline grabber. The company’s AI business hit an annual run rate of $37 billion, representing 123% year-over-year growth. Azure grew 43%. Microsoft guided its 2026 capital expenditures to approximately $175 billion.

Amazon wasn’t far behind. AWS posted revenue growth of 28% or more in Q2, prompting the company to revise its full-year capex guidance upward to $220 billion.

Meta raised its 2026 capex range to between $130 billion and $145 billion. The result was a nearly 10% decline in Meta’s stock price amid scrutiny over its monetization timelines.

$725 billion and counting

The combined projected AI-related capital expenditures from just four companies, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, is estimated to reach roughly $725 billion in 2026. That number is expected to balloon to somewhere between $950 billion and $1.2 trillion in 2027.

Microsoft explicitly credited its OpenAI partnership as a primary driver of its AI momentum. Azure isn’t just selling compute, it’s selling access to frontier AI models, and enterprises are buying.