2026 AI Earnings Analysis: Microsoft, Apple, and OpenAI Revenue Breakdown

If you’ve followed us long enough, you know we live for separating the hype from the reality. And honestly? This week’s earnings calls were a goldmine of awkwardness.

We watched Big Tech CEOs try to explain if and how they’re actually going to make money from AI, and the answers were... let’s say, wonderfully vague.

So here's the tea: 

Apple just posted a monster $143.8 billion in quarterly revenue (up 16%!). Yup, the iPhone’s still a beast. But then, a brave Morgan Stanley analyst finally asked the one question everyone's been pondering on: "How exactly do you monetize AI?"

Tim Cook’s response was peak corporate poetry. He claimed Apple will create "great value" that "opens up a range of opportunities across products and services." Translation: It’s basically like asking someone how they plan to pay rent and them responding "vibes." 

But wait—it gets better (or worse, depending on how you feel about watching billionaires squirm).

Over at Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella spent the entire earnings call doing what can only be described as "AI Use PR." The company posted solid numbers, we’re talking: $81.3 billion in revenue (up 17%), $38.3 billion in net income (up 21%) and a record-breaking cloud revenue of over $50 billion—but here's where it gets spicy: Microsoft dropped a jaw-dropping $72.4 billion on AI infrastructure just in the first half of this fiscal year. 

For context, they spent $88.2 billion in ALL of the previous year. That's some serious acceleration, folks. But of course, investors are sweating because both Azure (their cloud platform) and Microsoft 365 didn't grow as fast as expected. So naturally, everyone wanted to know: Is anyone actually USING all this AI stuff? 

Nadella's responses were... let's call them "creatively vague". According to him:

Overall, It’s like saying "I ate way more pizza this year" without admitting you ate two slices instead of one. Still, the one concrete win? Nadella claims demand "far outstrips data center supply," meaning all that new equipment is booked to capacity. But investors are still side-eyeing those billions in spending.

And then there's OpenAI, the company everyone thinks is crushing it, but plot twist: their Sora video app is actually struggling HARD. 

At launch in October 2025, it was a rocket ship. They hit 100,000 installs on Day One and reached No. 1 on the U.S. App Store faster than ChatGPT did. But now? The holiday season was a total buzzkill.

So what happened? 

Turns out people got bored when they couldn’t use SpongeBob and Pikachu in their AI videos anymore  (thanks, copyright controls) But hey, even a deal with Disney in December still couldn’t save the bleeding downloads.

And here's what's wild: Big Tech is expected to spend over $470 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026. Meanwhile, OpenAI doesn’t even plan to make any profit until 2030 and needs an estimated $207 billion in funding to get there. Let that sink in. They are spending money like it’s Monopoly cash and crossing their fingers it will work out eventually.

The big question Wall Street is asking: Is this brilliant long-term thinking or are we watching the world’s most expensive game of chicken? Cuz right now, the strategy seems to be:

So there you have it, folks. Big Tech is betting the farm on AI, and when pressed on how they'll make money, they give us corporate speak so vague it makes fortune cookies look specific. 

Stay tuned to see if this gamble pays off or becomes the most expensive "oops" in tech history.