Shipments of Apple and other foreign phones in China rose 9.2% in February compared to last year

+9%

Shipments of foreign-branded phones in China, including those made by Apple, rose more than 9% in February compared to a year earlier, according to data analyzed by Reuters. This is good news for Apple, which considers China one of its largest markets and has been struggling with local competition there lately. CEO Tim Cook recently went on a “charm offensive” in China to help boost business in the hypercompetitive market.

Apple, up about a half percentage point, is the rare tech stock in the green today.

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Rani Molla & Jon Keegan4m

Amazon closes at all-time high

Fresh off strong earnings Thursday, Amazon saw its stock price end the week at a record closing high of $244.22.

The stock is up 10% so far this year.

The e-commerce and cloud giant beat analysts’ revenue and earnings, and its massive gain was responsible for more than all of the positive return delivered by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF on Friday.

Jon Keegan

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all have cumulonimbus-sized cloud backlogs

The top cloud companies can’t keep up with the searing demand for AI computing.

Rani Molla5h

Google uses an AI-generated ad to sell AI search

Google is using AI video to tell consumers about its AI search tools, with a Veo 3-generated advertisement that will begin airing on TV today. In it, a cartoonish turkey uses Google’s AI Mode to plan a vacation from its farm before it’s eaten for Thanksgiving.

Like other AI ad campaigns that have opted to depict yetis or famous artworks rather than humans, Google chose a turkey as its protagonist to avoid the uncanny valley pitfall that happens when AI is used to generate human likenesses.

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

Exclusive | Google’s First AI Ad Avoids the Uncanny Valley by Casting a Turkey

Rani Molla6h

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft combined spent nearly $100 billion on capex last quarter

The numbers are in and tech giants Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft spent a whopping $97 billion last quarter on purchases of property and equipment. That’s nearly double what it was a year earlier as AI infrastructure costs continue to balloon and show no sign of stopping. Amazon, which reported earnings and capital expenditure spending that beat analysts’ expectations yesterday, continued to lead the pack, spending more than $35 billion on capex in the quarter that ended in September.

Note that the data we’re using here is from FactSet, which strips out finance leases when calculating capital expenditures. If those expenses were included the total would be well over $100 billion last quarter.

Rani Molla

Slicing the Pie

The best analyst questions from Apple’s earnings call

Apple even answered some of them!

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