Microsoft’s quarter pushed harder. Revenue of $82.89 billion grew 18.3%, EPS came in at $4.27 vs $4.07, and Azure grew 40%. Microsoft 365 Copilot paid seats crossed 20 million, up 250% YoY, with Accenture alone deploying over 740,000 seats. The contracted backlog (commercial RPO) sits at $627 billion, up 99%.<\/p>\n
\n| \n Lens<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n| \n Apple<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n| \n Microsoft<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n| \n Core AI bet<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n On-device Apple Intelligence<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n Azure plus agentic Copilot<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| \n Quarterly capex<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n Modest, hardware-led<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n $30.88B, up 84.39%<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| \n Shareholder return<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n $100B buyback, 4% dividend hike<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n Reinvestment over buybacks<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| \n P\/E<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n 38<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \n 31<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n Satya Nadella told investors Microsoft has “a frontier model royalty-free with all the IP rights… all the way to ’32” through the restructured OpenAI deal. Calendar 2026 capex is guided to roughly $190 billion. Apple is going the other direction, lifting buyback authorization by $100 billion while keeping AI spend disciplined. Two very different bets on what the next decade rewards.<\/p>\n The Next Test Is Margins and Memory <\/p>\n For Apple, I am watching memory costs. CFO Kevan Parekh warned that the June quarter carries “significantly higher memory costs”, with gross margin guided to 47.5% to 48.5%. Polymarket traders already price in a 95.5% probability of an iPhone 18 launch in 2026, so the cycle is loaded. For Microsoft, the question is whether Q4 capex above $40 billion keeps producing 40% Azure growth. Capacity is constrained at least through 2026.<\/p>\n Why I Lean Toward Microsoft for the AI Race, and Apple for the Long Hold <\/p>\n If the question is who is winning AI right now, I think Microsoft is. A $37 billion run rate growing 123% and a near-doubling backlog are concrete. Apple’s AI story is more atmospheric, and Reddit reflected that with the viral “AAPL, no AI, no Tim Cook, no problem” thread. That said, AAPL has rallied 47.1% over the past year while MSFT is down 2.16%, so price has already done some work.<\/p>\n The framing splits cleanly: Microsoft offers more direct AI exposure today, while Apple offers a 2.5 billion-device installed base compounding through Services. Both trade at premium multiples with defensible franchises.<\/p>\n The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks <\/p>\n This analyst’s 2025 picks are up 106% on average. He just named his top 10 stocks to buy in 2026. Get them here FREE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quick Read Apple (AAPL) reported Q2 FY26 revenue of $111.18B, up 16.6% YoY, with iPhone revenue hitting $57B…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,311,289,290,18,19,17,305,45259,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-479276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-microsoft","16":"tag-microsoft-365","17":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116556383258423510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} | | | |