Shares of Meta Platforms plunged nearly 10 per cent at Wall Street's opening on Thursday, April 30, contrasting sharply with a more than six per cent surge in Google-parent Alphabet's stock.
The split performance underscores investor differentiation among Big Tech firms' aggressive artificial intelligence spending strategies.
Alphabet led the quarterly earnings pack, with investors cheering its AI pivot and strong results across divisions, reporting 62.6 billion dollars profit on nearly 110 billion dollars revenue that beat expectations.
Meta, however, rattled markets by hiking capital spending by 10 billion dollars to 125-145 billion dollars—mostly for data centres—to chase "superintelligence," with quarterly expenses hitting 33.4 billion dollars.
Unlike Alphabet, Amazon or Microsoft, which offset AI costs via cloud sales, Meta lacks immediate revenue from its investments.
Amazon and Microsoft shares dipped two per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively amid concerns over returns on infrastructure outlays.
Broader indices held steady: Dow Jones rose 0.8 per cent to 49,241 points, S&P 500 gained 0.2 per cent to 7,151, while Nasdaq stayed flat at 24,665.
Meta last week announced 8,000 job cuts and 6,000 unfilled roles to curb costs for AI goals, but Wall Street questions the spending scale.
