{"id":124027,"date":"2026-07-30T09:13:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/124027\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T09:13:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:13:14","slug":"fortune-tech-metas-cash-crunch-microsofts-azure-milestone-doordash-drone-deliveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/124027\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortune Tech: Meta\u2019s cash crunch, Microsoft\u2019s Azure milestone, DoorDash drone deliveries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Big day for tech earnings yesterday\u2014Arm, Microsoft<\/a>, Meta<\/a>, Qualcomm<\/a> and Robinhood all reported after the bell. See how they did below.<\/p>\n

The earningspalooza continues today with Amazon<\/a>, Apple<\/a>, Coinbase, LG<\/a>, Reddit, Roblox<\/a>, and Samsung<\/a> all reporting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s get right to it, shall we? \u2014Andrew Nusca<\/p>\n

P.S. Good one from colleague Nicholas Gordon about China\u2019s \u201ctwo-speed economy.\u201d Give it a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to\u00a0Fortune Tech?\u00a0Drop a line\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meta stock drops 10% as free cash flow gets crushed\"MetaThe AI trade is coming to a realization: America\u2019s best businesses are turning into utilities.<\/p>\n

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9, 2026. (Photo: David Paul Morris\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Such is the fate that befalls<\/a> Meta, whose shares fell as much as 10% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company missed earnings<\/a> expectations, owing to costs ballooning 55%.<\/p>\n

Its operating income fell 8%, net income dropped 14%, and it barely eked out $784 million of free cash flow\u2014just narrowly missing falling into negative territory and well below the roughly $12 billion in free cash flow the company has averaged over the previous eight quarters.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s revenue in Q2 was up 28% from a year earlier, beating expectations, but operating income for Family of Apps, the segment containing Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, fell to $23.4 billion from $25.0 billion.<\/p>\n

In other words, its core business grew revenue but made less money doing it\u2014and the money that the company is earning is immediately being used.<\/p>\n

The reason why is the term investors have come to love to hate: capex. Capital expenditures are now up to $31.1 billion in the quarter, nearly double the amount spent a year earlier. The company spent almost every dollar its businesses could generate on AI infrastructure: servers, data centers, network infrastructure, and chips.<\/p>\n

Meta now expects full-year capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion, having raised the floor. It spent $50.9 billion in the first half. That leaves $39 billion to $47 billion a quarter for the rest of the year, against operating cash flow of roughly $32 billion. So it follows that this quarter was the last positive cash-flow quarter this year. \u2014Eva Roytburg<\/p>\n

Microsoft Azure sales top $100 billion for the first time<\/p>\n

Microsoft said Wednesday that its Azure cloud business surpassed $100 billion<\/a> in revenue for its fiscal year 2026, giving its investors confidence even as the broader market plunged on worries over AI spending and U.S. inflation.<\/p>\n

The annual gains for Azure\u2014up 41% on last year\u2019s $75 billion\u2014helped cement Microsoft\u2019s position as a leading cloud and AI infrastructure giant behind Amazon Web Services.<\/p>\n

For the year, revenue came in at $331.8 billion. Earnings per share rose 32% to $17.95, though it was helped along by a $3.2 billion gain from Microsoft\u2019s investment in Anthropic and nearly $5 billion in gains from its investment in OpenAI during the year.<\/p>\n

Shares of Microsoft rose more than 8% in after-hours trading despite a broad market selloff.<\/p>\n

For the fourth quarter, cloud growth increased 43%<\/a> year over year, providing a boost to overall quarterly revenue of $90 billion, above analyst estimates of $87.7 billion.<\/p>\n

Signed customer agreements that haven\u2019t yet turned into revenue totaled $678 billion, up 84%.<\/p>\n

On a call with investors, CEO Satya Nadella said Microsoft has seen a fivefold increase in customers using multiple AI providers. Azure now offers some 11,000 models.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Microsoft estimated Q1 Azure growth at about 45% and Q1 capex exceeding $50 billion. CFO Amy Hood added that Microsoft planned to extend the \u201cuseful life\u201d of the buildings housing its data centers from 15 to 25 years, reducing reported capex. \u2014Amanda Gerut<\/p>\n

DoorDash prepares to begin drone deliveries<\/p>\n

DoorDash has officially launched a drone delivery effort dubbed DoorDash Air<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The launch coincides with the San Francisco company\u2019s success in securing a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration certification (Part 135<\/a>, if you\u2019re curious) to operate commercial drone deliveries in the U.S., joining Alphabet (Wing), Amazon (Prime Air), UPS (Flight Forward), and four others.<\/p>\n

Much like its ride-hailing peers, DoorDash is interested in reducing its reliance on human operators for certain (low margin) orders, cutting delivery times for mid-range orders, and expanding its network.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company currently partners with Wing<\/a> and Flytrex<\/a> in various metro areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrone delivery means consumers can have what they need when they need it most, whether that\u2019s essentials like cold medicine or time-sensitive items like a coffee or hot meal to a nurse finishing a 12-hour shift,\u201d DoorDash wrote in a blog post.<\/p>\n

The drone delivery project\u2014which includes the logistics system to determine what can successfully be carried by a drone\u2014was developed by DoorDash Labs, the company\u2019s autonomy and robotics division. The group also produced a ground delivery robot called Dot<\/a> that can be found in a clutch of Phoenix suburbs (Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, and Chandler) and in a portion of Fremont, California. \u2014AN<\/p>\n

More tech<\/p>\n

\u2014Russia charges Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activity<\/a>. The nation alleges that Ukrainian spies used Telegram to organize attacks inside Russia.<\/p>\n

\u2014Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Lilian Weng<\/a> will return to OpenAI, citing health concerns.<\/p>\n

\u2014Robinhood crypto revenue tops modest estimates<\/a> amid a record quarter for revenue.<\/p>\n

\u2014X settles with the World Federation of Advertisers<\/a>, ending its long-running legal spat over alleged brand boycotts.<\/p>\n

\u2014Big Tech\u2019s hottest new hire?<\/a> Electricians and carpenters to build all those AI data centers.<\/p>\n

\u2014Arm beats estimates.<\/a> Q1 sales are up 22% from last year to $1.29 billion; Q2 revenue and profit estimates are sunnier than expected.<\/p>\n

\u2014The U.K.\u2019s antitrust watchdog begins investigating Microsoft<\/a> for allegedly misleading users into renewing Microsoft 365 subscriptions with Copilot at a higher price.<\/p>\n

\u2014Waymo is back on the freeway<\/a>, starting in Phoenix, after a two-month suspension to improve performance.<\/p>\n

\u2014Qualcomm shares fall 7%.<\/a> Q3 revenue falls, year over year, and a Q4 profit forecast comes in lower than Wall Street estimates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning. Big day for tech earnings yesterday\u2014Arm, Microsoft, Meta, Qualcomm and Robinhood all reported after the bell.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1483,5079,7937,420,7829,14430,10639,1122,320,7828,7492,2008,157,1340,10085,14122,3476,6326],"class_list":["post-124027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-alphabet","tag-arm","tag-arm-holdings","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-doordash","tag-fortune-tech","tag-meta","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-mira-murati","tag-no-copyright","tag-openai","tag-qualcomm","tag-robinhood","tag-telegram","tag-waymo","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}