Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple to Report Q2 2026 Earnings; Cloud Capex Elevated

Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Apple will release quarterly results this week (July 2026). Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are the core drivers of US AI capital expenditure.

Microsoft's full-year 2026 capital expenditure plan is $190 billion, with last quarter's capex at $31.9 billion and free cash flow falling to $15.8 billion. Management guided Azure cloud revenue growth of 39%-40%. Amazon's capex plan is near $200 billion, with free cash flow of $1.2 billion over the past twelve months. Its AWS cloud business re-accelerated to 28% growth in the first quarter, with backlog exceeding $360 billion. Meta's 2026 capex guidance is $125-145 billion. Meta has no proprietary cloud business, so its AI investment returns must be realized through internal operations. Apple's capex is relatively small, and it continues to generate substantial free cash flow each quarter.

Backlogs for the three major cloud providers: Microsoft over $600 billion, Amazon over $360 billion, and Google Cloud $514 billion. Google Cloud's second-quarter revenue rose 82% year over year, Azure approached 40%, and AWS re-accelerated to 28%. S&P 500 constituent second-quarter earnings grew approximately 24.7% year over year.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will host this earnings call for the last time as CEO, after which John Ternus will take over.