Meta Platforms (META) released its Q2 2025 earnings yesterday, July 30, and the stock is trading sharply higher today, as the company not only reported better-than-expected numbers for the June quarter,

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% and is just above the record high it set on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was mostly unchanged as of 12:01 p.m. Eastern.

And both Meta and Microsoft were already on track to spend more than 30% of this year’s revenue on capital expenditures, compared with about 15% to 20% historically. Those outlays were already beginning to look like mere table stakes after Google parent Alphabet used its report last week to bump up its own capex spending plans for this year to $85 billion.

Wall Street's AI heavyweights added a combined half a trillion dollars in stock market value late on Wednesday after quarterly reports from Microsoft and Meta Platforms showed massive investments in the emerging technology were paying off.

The S&P 500 closed slightly lower Thursday after briefly hitting a new intraday high, as strong earnings from Microsoft and Meta Platforms failed to offset broader market weakness. At 3:08 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 330 points,

Futures tied to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq surged to record highs on Thursday after strong earnings from tech giants Meta and Microsoft reinforced investor confidence that artificial intelligence investments are paying off.