I fed Claude all 4 earnings and generated this summary:
All four Magnificent Seven hyperscalers reported strong Q1 2026 beats tonight, delivering a broad validation of the AI infrastructure investment thesis. Alphabet was the clear standout, with Google Cloud growing 63% to $20B — a massive acceleration from last quarter's 48% — and its cloud backlog nearly doubling to $460B. Microsoft was close behind, with Azure accelerating to 40% growth, topping its own 37–38% guidance, and Satya Nadella flagging that Microsoft's AI business has crossed a $37B annual revenue run rate, up 123% year-over-year. Amazon's AWS came in at 28% growth — its fastest pace in 15 quarters per Andy Jassy — while Meta's ad engine posted 33% revenue growth with operating margins holding flat at 41% despite a near-doubling of capex spending year-over-year.
The one cloud hanging over tonight's results is capital expenditure. Collectively these four companies are on track to spend somewhere north of $600B on AI infrastructure in 2026, and the free cash flow strain is real — Amazon's TTM free cash flow essentially went to zero at $1.2B, and Meta raised its full-year capex guidance to $125–145B (up from $115–135B), citing higher component pricing. The market had been demanding proof that the spending is translating into revenue, and tonight largely delivered that answer — particularly for Alphabet and Microsoft, where cloud growth is accelerating, not decelerating. Meta's capex raise will be the main point of debate heading into tomorrow's open, but the revenue beats across the board should give bulls the upper hand.