Next Thursday! The four tech giants will release their earnings on the same day, and surging AI faces a "moment of verification."

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The strongest theme in the U.S. stock market over the past few weeks is still AI. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes have rebounded about 11% and 18% from their lows, as funds flow back into technology, data centers, and related infrastructure.

The real test will come next Thursday. After the market closes on Wednesday, April 29 (U.S. time), Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon will all release their earnings on the same trading day; in Beijing time, that’s the early morning of Thursday, April 30. Google’s earnings call is at 1:30 pm Pacific time, and Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are all at 2:30 pm. The four companies are almost packed into the same time slot to report results.

The market’s previous rally was not just going in circles. These companies are still ramping up. Google’s capital spending guidance this year is between $175 billion and $185 billion; Meta’s range is $115 billion to $135 billion; Microsoft’s capital expenditure last quarter reached $37.5 billion, about two-thirds of which was invested in GPUs, CPUs, and other short-cycle assets; Amazon, in its shareholder letter, directly raised 2026 capital expenditures to about $200 billion. The money is still pouring in, which is in itself an important reason the market dares to chase the rally.

This time, Google’s main pressure lies on the cost side. The company has long warned that depreciation will accelerate in the first quarter this year, and rise significantly for the entire year. More spending is not unexpected, but the market is more concerned about whether cloud and AI-related revenues can digest these expenditures faster. If the earnings report only proves that Google will keep investing, the stock might not be too surprising; if both cloud business and margins stay solid, that's a different story.

Microsoft faces a different kind of challenge. Capital expenditure has already reached $37.5 billion, and management still says demand exceeds supply. This is a strong statement that also raises market expectations significantly.As long as Azure's growth and enterprise demand keep rising, Microsoft can justify high investment as locking in market share early; but if growth is not enough to support this level of spending, the market will shift its focus from orders to the payback period.

Meta’s challenge is the most direct. It has the strongest ad cash flows and the most aggressive infrastructure investments. The company has publicly stated that capital spending in 2026 will rise to $115 billion–$135 billion, while annual operating profit will still be higher than in 2025.With statements like these, after the earnings report, the market's judgment will be swift: can the profit-making ability of the ad business continue to cover the speed of AI investment expansion?

Amazon's rhythm is different. Its issue is not just how much it invests, but that much of the spending will be realized later. Andy Jassy made it clear in the shareholder letter that most of the cloud capital spending in 2026 will be gradually realized in 2027 to 2028, and the company has already secured a considerable amount of customer commitments. On the other hand, AWS will add 3.9 GW of power capacity in 2025, with total capacity expected to double by the end of 2027, though the company still admits there are capacity constraints and unmet demand. For this earnings report, the market will pay special attention to management's comments on customer commitments, capacity ramp-up, and the monetization timeline.

This is also what makes next Thursday worth watching. Previously, the market mainly traded on “who dares to keep spending.” By now, the scale of investment is too big for just storytelling. Once earnings are released, the questions will become more concrete: is revenue still accelerating, are orders getting clearer, and are margins and cash flows coming under pressure? Whoever among the four companies can answer all these will be on steadier ground. For those whose investments are still just far-off prospects, volatility will be higher.

For assets, the first to be affected are still the four tech giants themselves. After earnings, what determines the stock price may not just be how much revenue and EPS beat estimates, but also annual capital expenditure guidance, cloud growth, AI-related revenue disclosure, and whether pressure on margins has become more obvious. Moreover, the semiconductors, servers, networking equipment, and data center equipment chain still follows the spending of the tech giants most directly. Recently, software and chips have started to diverge, suggesting the market is concentrating more on the segments closer to orders and infrastructure. If all four earnings reinforce demand and the strength of capital expenditure, this divergence will only become more evident.

So next Thursday is more like a filter point, not a general on/off switch.There’s no sign that the AI trend is ending anytime soon—enthusiasm and capital remain. More likely, there will be further internal differentiation in pricing: companies that deliver results faster, with stronger orders and steadier profits, will keep getting premium valuations; for those with high spending and lots of potential but unclear paths to returns, price volatility will be greater.

On earnings day, the key is still those specific issues: will annual capital expenditure guidance be raised again, will cloud growth stay strong, will there be clearer disclosure of AI-related revenue, and have margins and cash flow come under greater pressure? For those four questions, as long as growth and demand remain strong, and cost pressures aren’t out of control, this trade is not over; if the market does need to recalculate, it will start with the priciest, most crowded, most reliant on long-term returns.

Risk warning and disclaimerThe market has risks; investment requires caution. This article does not constitute individual investment advice and does not take into account individual users’ specific investment goals, financial status, or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions contained in this article are suitable for their particular situation. Investing based on this article is at your own risk. ```