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Amazon Surges On Cloud Momentum As Apple Falls On Soft Guidance In A Splintered Big Tech Earnings Season

Amazon and Apple reported quarterly results that beat Wall Street expectations, but investors reacted differently as attention shifted to outlooks, artificial intelligence spending and future growth. While Amazon shares rose in premarket trading Friday after strong cloud results, Apple came under pressure after issuing weaker-than-expected guidance despite beating estimates on revenue, earnings and iPhone sales.

Amazon Sees Strong Cloud Growth

Revenue at Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division, increased 37% year over year, marking its fastest growth since 2021. Growth in AWS reassured investors that demand for cloud infrastructure remains strong as AI adoption accelerates.

To support that expansion, Amazon raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to $220 billion from $200 billion, reflecting continued investment in AI infrastructure.

“AWS’s strong growth is a clear indicator that its infrastructure investments are meeting market demand rather than outpacing it,” Tracy Woo, principal analyst at Forrester, said in a note.

Apple Outlook Weighs On Shares

Apple exceeded Wall Street expectations for revenue, earnings and iPhone sales, but forecast revenue growth of 9% to 11% for the current quarter, below analysts’ expectations of 12%, according to LSEG.

Supply constraints remain a challenge, particularly for memory components used across the company’s product portfolio. Those pressures have already contributed to higher prices for Macs and iPads, while analysts expect iPhone prices to increase later this year.

Investors Focus On AI Execution

The contrasting market reaction highlights how closely investors are watching AI-related investment and growth across the technology sector. Before Friday’s move, Amazon shares had gained about 4% this year, compared with roughly 23% for Apple.

Elsewhere in the sector, Meta shares fell 8% on Thursday, while Microsoft gained 15%, reflecting differing investor views on AI investment strategies and expected returns.

Mirendil Signs $100 Million Google Cloud Deal To Advance Self-Improving AI

AI startup Mirendil has signed a multi-year agreement worth more than $100 million with Google Cloud to secure computing infrastructure for its self-improving AI research.

The partnership reflects growing competition among AI companies to lock in access to high-performance computing, while cloud providers race to attract promising startups developing next-generation AI models.

Backing The Next Stage Of AI Research

Mirendil plans to use Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), Nvidia GPUs and managed training infrastructure to develop AI systems capable of improving their own performance over time.

Known as recursive self-improvement, the concept focuses on building AI that can refine its knowledge and capabilities with minimal human intervention. The technology is attracting growing interest across the industry, with several startups and leading AI labs exploring similar approaches.

According to co-founder and Chief Executive Behnam Neyshabur, the long-term goal is to develop AI that can automate scientific research and accelerate discoveries in fields such as medicine, biology and materials science.

Compute Capacity Becomes A Strategic Asset

Training increasingly advanced AI models requires enormous computing resources, making long-term infrastructure agreements a critical competitive advantage.

Mirendil said Google’s combination of TPUs and GPUs allows workloads to be matched with the most suitable hardware, improving efficiency while reducing costs for customers.

For Google Cloud, the agreement strengthens its position in the race to provide infrastructure for frontier AI developers, while giving the company exposure to one of the industry’s emerging approaches to next-generation artificial intelligence.

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