Meta shares plummet near 10% after earnings, Google skyrockets

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Meta shares tumbled nearly 10 percent at the opening Thursday on Wall Street, while Google-parent Alphabet surged more than six percent.

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The fluctuations came a day after the tech rivals reported quarterly earnings and showed starkly different investor reactions for their costly bets on artificial intelligence.

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Amazon and Microsoft, which also posted earnings on Wednesday, saw their shares fall over AI concerns, by two percent and 3.7 percent respectively.

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The earnings came as AI titans pump billions of dollars into cloud computing and artificial intelligence, vying to lead in a technology that they insist will transform all aspects of life.

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Investors have broadly lauded Google’s success in pivoting to AI and its solid revenue across major divisions.

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The tech giant reported a profit of $62.6 billion on revenue just shy of $110 billion, easily eclipsing the same period a year earlier and beating market expectations.

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Social media behemoth Meta, meanwhile, sent tremors through its results by announcing that expenses notched up to $33.4 billion as it chases “superintelligence,” including a hiring spree for top AI talent.

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The company also increased its projected capital spending — mainly for data centers — for the year by $10 billion, to a new range of $125 billion to $145 billion.

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Unlike Amazon, Microsoft and Google, which sell AI capabilities to cloud clients, Meta’s AI investments are not directly tied to a revenue stream.

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The company has moved to rein in costs to help fund its AI ambitions, announcing last week that it would cut roughly 8,000 jobs and leave 6,000 open roles unfilled.

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A few minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.8 percent at around 49,241. The broad-based S&P 500 gained 0.2 percent to about 7,151, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index was flat at around 24,665.

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