"Financial Report" Meta's revenue exceeded expectations, increasing investment in AI and pushing stocks up by 12%. Microsoft's Azure cloud profits hit a new high, with market capitalization reaching 4 trillion dollars.

Meta and Microsoft respectively announced their latest earnings, with both companies not only exceeding revenue and profit expectations but also raising their capital expenditure, demonstrating a strong commitment to the field of artificial intelligence (AI). (Background: Bitcoin is looking at $150,000! Analyst: The "Big and Beautiful Act" is like the pandemic printing money, global M2 hitting new highs "Favourable Information for BTC") (Additional context: Experts plead for Fed’s Powell: With Bitcoin, US stocks, and gold hitting new highs, why lower interest rates when the economy is so strong?) Meta earlier announced its Q2 financial report after the US stock market closed, with revenue reaching $47.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 22%, surpassing the market expectation of $44.8 billion. The core advertising business performed exceptionally well, with revenue of $46.56 billion, also exceeding Wall Street's estimate of $43.97 billion. The company estimates that Q3 revenue will be between $47.5 billion and $50.5 billion, with the median exceeding the analyst estimate of $46.2 billion, indicating continued growth momentum. This prompted Meta's stock price to jump 11.8% in after-hours trading. Highlights of Meta’s earnings report: Strong advertising business, continued AI investment. In the face of the AI technology race, Meta once again raised the lower limit of its capital expenditure for 2025 to $66 billion, while keeping the upper limit at $72 billion, emphasizing its commitment to continue investing in talent, infrastructure, data centers, and energy. At the same time, CEO Zuckerberg is actively promoting the restructuring of the AI department, establishing Meta Superintelligence Labs and recruiting Scale AI co-founder Wang Tao to lead it, aiming to develop AI technology at a human level for application in various products. Zuckerberg emphasized: "The robust advertising business allows the company to accelerate investment in AI and has already generated substantial revenue from the new generation of generative AI features." However, Meta's hardware division, Reality Labs, continues to drag down overall performance. This division reported revenue of only $370 million last quarter, falling short of market expectations, with an operating loss of up to $4.5 billion. Although sales of smart glasses have increased, sales of Quest headsets have declined, and the newly launched advertising features on WhatsApp have limited contributions to performance in the short term. Microsoft’s financial report: Cloud business and AI services drive revenue growth. Microsoft also announced its Q2 financial report on the same day, showing strong growth momentum. Last quarter's revenue reached $76.44 billion, an 18% year-on-year increase, marking the fastest growth rate in over three years, with net profit growing nearly 24% to $27.23 billion. The most notable aspect is the Azure cloud computing business, which for the first time in 2025 is projected to exceed $75 billion in annual revenue, growing 34% from last year, with last quarter's revenue growth of 39%, and an estimated growth of 37% this quarter, far exceeding market expectations. In response to the surging demand for AI services, Microsoft estimates that its capital expenditure for this quarter will reach $30 billion, setting a record high for a single quarter, well above the market expectation of $23.75 billion. The company emphasized that expanding expenditure will help overcome supply bottlenecks and meet the demands for AI and cloud computing. The CFO stated: "We will continue to invest to seize the enormous opportunities in front of us." Microsoft CEO Nadella pointed out that the AI-driven Copilot product now has over 100 million active users per month, driving growth in business software sales. This series of results not only led to Microsoft's stock price rising over 8% in after-hours trading. The AI capital expenditure competition intensifies. The financial reports of Meta and Microsoft reveal that tech giants are investing in AI on an unprecedented scale. Meta has revised its capital expenditure budget for 2025 to $66 billion to $72 billion, while Microsoft estimates its expenditure for this quarter at $30 billion. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also raised its annual capital expenditure forecast to $85 billion the previous week. The combined capital expenditure of these three giants is expected to reach $330 billion this year, driving the overall market capitalization of AI-related stocks to continue growing. Forrester analyst Mike Proulx stated: "This AI race is somewhat akin to the battles over personal computers, browsers, search engines, and smartphones in the past, with the difference being that AI technology itself is accelerating this race." To win, companies must have sufficient capital and technical strength to stand out in the competition. However, high capital expenditure also brings short-term profit pressure. Although Meta and Microsoft both showed growth in revenue and profit, losses in hardware divisions and increased infrastructure investments complicate the cost structure. Investors are concerned whether this wave of AI investment can continue to translate into long-term profits, which still requires close observation of subsequent industry developments. Related reports: Why aren’t Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft touching Bitcoin? Meta frantically snatches AI talent, Zuckerberg claims "salaries break $10 million"; Sam Altman sarcastically remarks: can’t buy the best employees. (Financial Reports) Meta’s revenue exceeds expectations, increasing investment in AI, shares surge 12%, Microsoft’s Azure cloud profits hit new highs, market capitalization reaches $4 trillion. This article was first published in BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.