The word “AI” was uttered more than 200 times on earnings calls by Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which all delivered their results this week. It’s the one area where executives are emphatically promising to spend gobs of cash — on expensive servers and infrastructure to run the technology, and on building it into tools for users, clients and employees. Those commitments have followed breathless updates on spending cuts, primarily through the elimination of more than 40,000 jobs from those three companies in recent months.
“We remain committed to delivering long-term growth and creating capacity to invest in our most compelling growth areas by re-engineering our cost base,” Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said in an interview this week. That’s corporate speak for: We’re taking money away from things that we don’t think will make us a more valuable company and giving it to the things that will.
Artificial intelligence isn’t the only thing that’s still attracting cash. Alphabet is also placating shareholders with billions of dollars in buybacks. Its new $70 billion share repurchase program ties last year’s as the biggest in company history — and matches what the search giant spent on R&D and capital expenditures last year.
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