US tech stocks diverge: Apple plunges over 7% after results, Amazon jumps over 12%, AI chip stocks rally
Apple shares dropped more than 7% after the company reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $109.4 billion, up 16% year-on-year, with net profit rising 27% to $29.79 billion. Amazon surged over 12% after its second-quarter revenue grew 20% to $200.6 billion, driven by AWS cloud revenue accelerating 37% to $42.2 billion. AI chip stocks posted broad gains, led by Intel, TSMC and AMD. OpenAI cut prices for two GPT-5.6 models by up to 80%. Google DeepMind launched a humanoid robot AI model with 92% success in unscrewing a lightbulb. Anthropic disclosed its Claude models gained unauthorized access to three institutions during a security test due to a misconfiguration.
Apple on July 30 reported results for the fiscal third quarter of 2026. Revenue rose 16% year-on-year to $109.4 billion, net profit increased 27% to $29.79 billion, and earnings per share came to $2.02. Gross margin for the quarter was 50.1%. iPhone revenue climbed 22% to $54.3 billion; Mac revenue grew 29% to $10.4 billion; iPad revenue slipped 5.9% to $6.19 billion; Services revenue advanced 12.1% to $30.7 billion; and Wearables, Home and Accessories revenue rose 6.5% to $7.883 billion. Greater China revenue increased 22% to $18.82 billion. R&D spending jumped 32% to $11.7 billion. This was the last earnings report under CEO Tim Cook, who will step down on September 1 and be succeeded by John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering.
Foreign exchange fluctuations also weighed on revenue growth. Regarding AI, Cook said Apple Intelligence continues to drive product upgrades and that the company will keep increasing AI investment while maintaining a prudent approach. Apple plans to offer a higher tier of iCloud+ that users can purchase for more advanced services. The rollout of Apple Intelligence in the European Union and China is underway. After the report, Apple shares fell more than 7%.
Amazon on July 30 reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $200.6 billion, up 20% year-on-year, with operating profit rising 43% to $27.5 billion. AWS cloud revenue increased 37% to $42.2 billion, the fastest pace in 18 quarters; AWS operating profit grew 64% to $16.6 billion, lifting the operating margin to 39.4%. CEO Andy Jassy said annualized revenue from AWS AI businesses has exceeded $25 billion and is growing at a triple-digit rate. Due to continued heavy investment, free cash flow turned negative to an outflow of $7.6 billion over the past twelve months. Amazon shares rose 12.10% after the results.
AI chip and memory stocks gained broadly. Among AI chip stocks, Intel rose nearly 5%, TSMC and AMD climbed over 3%, Alphabet and Tesla advanced over 2%, and Qualcomm and NVIDIA added nearly 2%. Among memory stocks, SK Hynix jumped over 6%, Western Digital gained over 4%, Silicon Motion, Rambus and SanDisk rose over 3%, while Seagate Technology and Micron Technology added over 2%.
OpenAI on July 31 announced price cuts for its GPT-5.6 Terra and GPT-5.6 Luna models. The price for Luna was cut by 80% and Terra by 20%, while the price of the GPT-5.6 Sol model remains unchanged. After the adjustment, the Luna API price stands at $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; the Terra API price is $2 per million input tokens and $12 per million output tokens. The price reduction comes roughly three weeks after the GPT-5.6 series was launched.
Google DeepMind on July 31 unveiled Gemini Robotics 2, a next-generation AI model for humanoid robots that enables whole-body motion control by converting camera images and natural language instructions directly into motor commands. In tests, the model achieved a 92% success rate in tasks such as unscrewing a lightbulb, though its success rate declined on more complex tasks. Alphabet shares rose 2.46% after the announcement.
Anthropic said on July 30 that its AI model Claude obtained unauthorized access to systems at three institutions during a cybersecurity test due to a configuration error. The incident involved models including Claude Opus 4.7 and Claude Mythos 5, and the earliest unauthorized access dated back to April 2026. The company attributed the incident to the test environment being accidentally connected to the internet, and has suspended the relevant tests and notified the affected institutions.
Sony on July 31 reported results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2026 year, with net profit rising 32% year-on-year to 342.16 billion yen and operating profit increasing 40% to 476.5 billion yen. Sony shares rose 3.03%.