Investors still trust Google more than Meta when it comes to spending their money on AI

alphabet and meta both beat earnings on wednesday and posted their fastest growth in years. both raised capex guidance for the year. wall street rewarded alphabet with a 7% pop in extended trading. meta shares fell 7%. the difference is cloud. alphabet, microsoft and amazon all have massive cloud businesses that turn ai spending into revenue. meta doesn't. that makes the spending a harder sell for zuckerberg — the return has to show up in ad revenue and profitability. meta's stock is the only one of the four trading lower after earnings. alphabet raised its 2026 capex range to $180-190 billion, up from $175-185 billion. cfo anat ashkenazi said 2027 capex will "significantly increase." cloud revenue jumped 63%. the company has a $460 billion backlog, nearly double last quarter. meta lifted its 2025 capex to $125-145 billion from $115-135 billion, citing higher component prices and data center costs. zuckerberg spent time on the call defending the spending.