Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in Seattle on May 19, 2025.Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images

Microsoft delivered a blockbuster quarter to close its 2025 fiscal year, riding the wave of surging demand for cloud and AI services and sending its stock to new heights in after-hours trading. 

For the quarter ended June 30, 2025, Microsoft reported revenue of $76.4 billion, an 18% jump over the previous year. Net income climbed even more swiftly, up 24% to $27.2 billion. Earnings per share reached $3.65, outpacing analyst estimates of $3.37. 

“In our largest quarter of the year,” CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on the subsequent earnings call, “we significantly exceeded expectations.”

Investors responded decisively to the upbeat results and bullish AI outlook. 

Microsoft’s shares spiked over 7% in after-hours trading, pushing the stock toward record highs and lifting Microsoft’s market capitalization past the $4 trillion mark—cementing its place as one of just two companies to reach that level globally, along with Nvidia. 

The reaction underscored Wall Street’s confidence in Microsoft’s strategy, particularly its aggressive investments in cloud infrastructure and its push to commercialize AI tools such as Copilot across its productivity and developer platforms.

The company’s Intelligent Cloud segment—home to Azure—generated $29.9 billion in revenue, up a robust 26%. Azure and other cloud services revenue soared 39% for the quarter, while annual Azure revenue surpassed $75 billion, growing 34% year over year.

The Productivity and Business Processes segment, anchored by Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn, generated $33.1 billion (up 16%), and More Personal Computing brought in $13.5 billion (up 9%), bolstered by a rebound in device demand and rising Xbox content revenue. —Nick Lichtenberg

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects to deliver “personal superintelligence for everyone,” but his ambitious bets on AI are affecting the company’s cash flows and are likely to hit expenses even harder as Meta soups up its AI capabilities and continues its hiring spree.

The social media giant said it spent $17 billion on capital expenditures during its fiscal second quarter, mostly on AI infrastructure and data centers, and it expects to continue to spend heavily through 2026. 

Still, Meta’s shares soared 11.5% in after-hours trading after delivering blockbuster second-quarter financial results. 

Revenue cruised 22% higher to $47.5 billion, and its core advertising business generated $46.6 billion in ad revenue across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Daily active users grew to 3.5 billion people and profit margins improved, with net income rising 36% to $18.3 billion compared to last year. 

“The intersection of technology and culture is where Meta focuses,” said Zuckerberg in an Instagram reel defining Meta’s aims for superintelligence. The new lab will focus on developing the next generation of Meta’s models, he said.

Zuckerberg said the company is building an “elite, talent-dense team,” led by one of the world’s youngest billionaires, Alexandr Wang. The new superintelligence team will have access to “unparalleled compute” as Meta builds out new gigawatt+ clusters. 

“We’re making all these investments because we have conviction that superintelligence is going to improve every aspect of what we do,” Zuckerberg said. —Amanda Gerut

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June left many Wall Street voices feeling oddly nostalgic—and not in a good way. 

In a July 30 research note, Dan Ives, a top tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, described the event as “an episode out of Back to the Future” due to Apple’s scant mention of artificial intelligence—“the elephant in the room.”

While rivals are racing ahead with AI, Apple’s WWDC leaned on hardware updates and its services story, keeping its AI roadmap and Siri’s future conspicuously vague.

“Any innovation around AI at Apple is not coming from inside the walls of Apple Park,” Ives wrote, suggesting the company’s days of building transformative technology in-house “may be over.” 

“The time has come” for a big acquisition, he added, singling out Perplexity as a “no brainer” acquisition target—even if it costs upwards of $40 billion. Such a move could instantly supercharge Apple’s lagging AI platform and help reposition Siri as the “next AI gateway for consumers,” Ives wrote.

Apple’s largest acquisition remains Beats for $3 billion—a minor sum compared to current AI deals.

Still, Apple faces mounting headwinds: trade tensions, evolving supply chain risks, competition from Asian rivals, and top AI talent departures. While analysts still rate Apple “Outperform”—citing iPhone 17 and services growth—the muted AI narrative has fueled fears Apple risks obsolescence if it doesn’t adapt. 

Ives concluded: “This chapter will define Cook’s legacy.” —NL

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