GoKawiilAlphabet 's stock surged on Thursday, lifting Google to its best month on Wall Street since 2004, after the company reported better-than-expected results, driven by soaring cloud revenue.
While Alphabet jumped 10% for the day, Meta shares plunged almost 9%, their steepest drop since October, as investors digested Wednesday's results, which included plans to up the ante on artificial intelligence spending.
The diverging stock moves show that Wall Street isn't guaranteed to applaud every tech company's AI spending spree.
"The market was less united on what to make of the spending plans, with investors still trying to balance the scale of the AI opportunity against the cash required to chase it," Matt Britzman, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, wrote in a Thursday research note. "But the bigger takeaway is that this cycle is nowhere near cooling."
Alphabet topped analysts' estimates for first-quarter revenue, helped by its booming Google Cloud business, which recorded a 63% increase in revenue from a year ago. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said cloud growth was driven by demand for its enterprise AI solutions.
The company revised its capital expenditure forecast this year to between $180 billion and $190 billion, up from its previous estimate of $175 billion to $185 billion.
Alphabet shares rallied 34% in April, their sharpest monthly gain since October 2004, shortly after Google's IPO. Alphabet was formed as Google's parent company in 2015.