Microsoft results can be a tough cover.

A lot depends on what Amy Hood says during the call, and there are times when the outlook, particularly the Azure guide, is all that ends up mattering for the next day’s trade.

I gave up a long time ago trying to read those particular tea leaves in favor of simply documenting the numbers and leaving the rest to analysts. Analysts like Evercore’s Kirk Materne, who gets paid multiples of a registered nurse’s salary to come up with lines like this one, from his earnings preview: “We believe the Azure results and guidance as well as Microsoft’s commentary on capex are going to be the keys to the quarter.” I mean, Jesus Christ. I should’ve been a tech analyst. The bar for “insightful” isn’t very high, apparently.

Anyway, Microsoft had a good quarter. $70.1 billion on the top-line was up 13% YoY and beat estimates. The Street was looking for $68.5 billion.

This marks the first quarter of accelerating revenue growth in a year. The figure above also shows Azure growth, which clocked in at 33% GAAP and 35% in constant currency terms. Overall Cloud sales were $42.4 billion, basically in line. Intelligent Cloud revenue was $26.8 billion, a beat (analysts wanted $25.99 billion there).

“Cloud and AI are the essential inputs for every business to expand output, reduce costs and accelerate growth,” Satya Nadella said Wednesday, in nebulous remarks accompanying the press release. “From AI infrastraucture and platforms to apps, we are innovating across the stack to deliver for our customers,” he went on.

Nadella, Andy Jassy and Sundar Pichai may as well just answer every question with “AI,” “Cloud” or, better, “AI and Cloud.” “Can you tell us a little about what you see driving growth this quarter?” “AI and Cloud.” “If you can only get one thing right this year, what would it be?” “AI.” “Let’s say you can get two things right, what are they?” “AI and Cloud.” “You find an injured ferret, nurse it back to health and decide to keep it as a pet. What’s it’s name?” “AI.” “Old men often shout and shake their fists at these marshmallow-like climate occurrences.” “What are Clouds, Alex?”

The rest of Microsoft’s numbers were fine. Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $29.9 billion against $29.65 billion seen. More Personal Computing sales of $13.4 billion were easily ahead of the $12.67 billion analysts expected. Operating income was $32 billion versus an estimated $30.31 billion. EPS of $3.46 beat by a quarter.

Again, these results were unequivocally good, particularly considering all the uncertainty swirling around everything from the wisdom of AI capex outlays post-DeepSeek to Donald Trump’s tariffs. Unless Hood and Nadella spring a surprise on the call — e.g., a poor Azure guide or a capex outlook that’s just a mile ahead of expectations — it’s hard to see investors finding too much in the way of fault here.

Meanwhile, over at Mark’s dojo (remember: Zuckerberg’s a ninja now; a ninja who dresses like a rapper), Meta rang up $42.31 billion of revenue last quarter, more than the $41.38 billion consensus saw.

As the figure shows, the YoY growth rate, 16%, was the slowest since Q2 2023. I’m not sure that matters, frankly. As long as Mark beats and grows the top-line at a decent clip, that’ll be good enough if he can keep expenses under control.

That — the expense point — is a big “if,” but the company did cut its full-year expense outlook on Wednesday to between $113 billion and $118 billion, from $114 billion to $119 billion.

The capex guide was high, though. Meta now sees full-year 2025 capital expenditures of between $64 billion and $72 billion, up meaningfully from the company’s prior outlook of $60 billion to $65 billion. Not surprisingly, the release cited “additional data center investments to support artificial intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the cost of infrastructure hardware.” The Street expected $59.27 billion in capex for 2025, so that obviously needs to come up.

Look, I’m not a computer scientist, I struggle sometimes to update the software on my iPhone (“How many goddamn times do I have to re-enter my pin?!”) and on a lot of days, I wish technology would just go away. So I suppose I don’t know what I’m talking about. That said, this AI capex spend feels like a black hole at times, and everyone still seems to be operating in a mindset that says “more’s always better,” as opposed to asking “how can we maybe do more with less?”

Mark reminded investors Wednesday that he’s working on some AI glasses. There’s “good progress” on that product, he said, and much as it pains me to say this as a lifelong Apple fan, anything’s going to be better than that enormous headset Tim Cook built. I said it then, and I’ll say it again: Those things — the “Vision Pro” set — could’ve let you see into the future and people still wouldn’t have bought them. Because no one wants to walk around in public with a giant set of ski goggles on.

Meta guided for between $42.5 and $45.5 billion of current quarter revenue. The midpoint there’s basically in line with expectations. Capex should be $14.75 billion in Q2. “We’ve had a strong start to an important year, our community continues to grow and our business is performing very well,” Zuckerberg said. EPS of $6.43 was up 37% YoY and blew away consensus. Meta’s operating margin, at 41%, constituted a 400bps beat.

All in all, these results — from Microsoft and Meta — suggest big US tech’s doing just fine, and given the extent to which big-tech CEOs have shown every inclination to endear themselves to Trump, it’s reasonable to assess that he’ll do what he can to spare them the worst of whatever’s coming. And even let them profit from it where he can.