$65.6 billion. That’s how much revenue Microsoft generated during the three months ended September 30.

That’s more than I brought in. How about you?

Happily for investors, it’s also more than analysts expected. Consensus for Satya Nadella’s top-line was $64.51 billion.

The 12-month growth rate, 16%, was a marginal acceleration from last quarter.

The first letters out of Nadella’s “mouth” in the press release were “A” and “I”. Put those together and you get a selfish Fonzie: “Ayyy I.” I’m kidding. And only the oldest among you will get it. Put “A” and “I” together and you just get “AI,” which Nadella said is driving a “transformation” that’s “changing work and workflow across every role, function and business process.”

Microsoft, thanks in large part to its early investment in Sam Altman’s doomsday project, is on the bleeding edge. “We are expanding our opportunity and winning new customers as we help them apply our AI platforms and tools to drive new growth and operating leverage,” Nadella went on.

Nobody cares about anything but Azure when it comes to Microsoft, so there’s no use burying the lede any more than I already have. Azure growth was 34% in constant currency terms last quarter. Is that good? Who knows, honestly. It looks like consensus was 30.5%, but then again, the company changed its methodology for calculating the figure. It’s not bad, I can confidently say that. Amy Hood will confidently say more on the call, and investors will trade on her lead. In the press release, she touted 22% growth in overall Cloud revenue, which was $38.9 billion, ahead of the $38.11 billion the Street expected.

EPS at Microsoft was $3.30 against $3.11 seen, and operating income of $30.6 billion beat by more than a billion. What can you say? The same thing I said about Alphabet on Tuesday. “Large numbers.” Analysts will parse this release and parse it and parse it some more, and investors will find a reason to love-buy the Azure outlook or hate-sell it, but at the end of the day, it’s hard to rationalize a fundamental bear case for these companies. What’s not to like? Other than the reckless, no-guardrails pursuit of a technology (“Ayyy I”) that some worry is an existential threat to the species.

Speaking of existential threats to the species, Mark Zuckerberg. I’m joking, Mark! Over in the metaverse, Zuck “had a good quarter,” as he put it. Meta grew the top-line by 19% to $40.59 billion, marginally ahead of consensus.

Zuckerberg, like Nadella, talked early, often and pretty much only about AI. He cited “progress” and “strong momentum” on implementation. He’s also pretty fired about those glasses — his “Orion” prototype which, to Mark’s credit, looks a helluva lot better than Tim Cook’s silly goggles.

Do note: Meta’s revenue growth was the slowest since the June 2023 quarter. That was expected, but it’s worth highlighting all the same.

Running quickly through the numbers, operating margin was 43%, which looked like a pretty meaningful beat — 350bps or so. EPS of $6.03 was more than ¢75 ahead of the Street. Ad impressions growth missed, and not by a little, but price per ad rose 11%, nearly double the expected increase.

Naturally, Reality Labs lost all kinds of money. That’s what it does. The red ink came to $4.43 billion last quarter. That was a little narrower than expected but… well, these losses aren’t going to stop anytime soon, and Meta makes no secret of that. In fact, Zuckerberg seems almost proud of it by now.

“For Reality Labs, we continue to expect 2024 operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts and investments to further scale our ecosystem,” Susan Li remarked, in the customary pseudo-disclosure.

For Q4, Meta sees $45 billion to $48 billion in revenue. Taking the midpoint there, the guide counted as a small beat. Consensus was looking for $46.09 billion in current-quarter sales.

Li lifted the low-end of the full-year capex guide to $38 billion from $37 billion. So, it’s $38 billion to $40 billion now. That’s on the high side. The Street expects just over $38 billion, so Meta’s almost surely going to overshoot there.

Mark’s gonna keep spending. “We continue to expect significant capital expenditures growth in 2025,” the release went on. “Given this, along with the back-end weighted nature of our 2024 capital expenditures, we expect a significant acceleration in infrastructure expense growth next year as we recognize higher growth in depreciation and operating expenses of our expanded infrastructure fleet.”

Don’t worry, it’ll all be worth it. You’ll see.