Tech stocks took a beating Tuesday after a Wall Street Journal report said OpenAI had missed internal growth targets. That sets the stage for the most consequential earnings day of the year: Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta all report Wednesday after the close. The four companies pledged well over half a trillion dollars in combined capital expenditure for 2026 alone. Investors now get their first quarterly read on whether revenue is keeping pace with that spending.
Each company has one number that answers the question.
Alphabet: Google Cloud Revenue
Alphabet heads into earnings with the strongest momentum. In Q4 2025, Google Cloud revenue surged 48% to $17.7 billion, its fastest clip in three years.
Cloud operating margins nearly doubled from 17.5% to 30.1% over the same period, and the Cloud backlog more than doubled year over year to $240 billion. The consensus forecast for this quarter is $18 billion in Google Cloud revenue, a 50% year-over-year increase, according to Bloomberg data. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says the buy side expects even stronger growth given Alphabet's backlog and custom-chip capabilities.
Alphabet's 2026 capex target of $175 billion to $185 billion exceeds its 2025 operating cash flow. Investors will be watching whether all three engines, Search, Cloud, and subscriptions, can sustain their Q4 pace through the first quarter.
Microsoft: Azure Growth Rate
Microsoft's cloud business is the clearest proxy for its AI monetization. Bloomberg estimates see 38% sales expansion for Azure and other cloud services, with 21% of that growth attributable to AI. The company is dealing with a memory crisis that has quadrupled memory costs and roughly doubled server hardware costs, according to Morgan Stanley. That adds to Microsoft's growing CapEx, which KeyBanc expects to hit $37.2 billion for the quarter, $2.6 billion above Wall Street forecasts.
Copilot adoption remains a key variable. Paid seat count hit about 15 million last month, roughly 3% of the overall Microsoft 365 commercial user base, almost three years after launch. But Copilot revenue should reach about $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2026, more than double year over year, according to TD Cowen.
Amazon: AWS Revenue
Amazon's cloud business is expected to deliver $37 billion in quarterly sales, a 25% increase year over year. The number carries extra weight this quarter after Amazon announced a "major expansion" of its partnership with OpenAI on Tuesday.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told an Amazon event in San Francisco that the deal involves co-developing a new platform for AI agents. The announcement came one day after OpenAI loosened its ties to longtime backer Microsoft, though Microsoft remains the primary cloud partner and OpenAI will continue paying Microsoft a share of revenue through 2030.
Altman said the partnership with AWS matters because "these systems need to run reliably and robustly" on infrastructure customers already trust.
Meta: Ad Revenue Growth
Meta is the least diversified of the four, driven almost entirely by advertising. The segment is expected to post $54 billion in sales, up 31% year over year. The advertising business has a clear AI tailwind. AI-generated video ad tools now command a $10 billion annual run rate, with quarter-on-quarter growth nearly three times the pace of overall ad revenue. But Meta's 2026 capex guidance of $115 billion to $135 billion represents a 67% to 97% jump from 2025's $69 billion, the steepest proportional increase among the four. That makes Meta the most vulnerable to any investor backlash over spending. Ad pricing and impression growth will determine whether the math holds.
