Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a panel at the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on June 09, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
Results were good, but not good enough.
That’s Wall Street’s reaction to quarterly results on Tuesday from Alphabet and Microsoft. Both companies reported revenue and earnings that exceeded estimates, yet the stocks sold off in extended trading.
In investor speak, the stocks were priced for perfection. Alphabet shares are up 56% for the year and climbed to a fresh high last week, exceeding the prior record from late 2021, the peak of the tech boom. Microsoft is up 70% over the past 12 months, also reaching a fresh high recently and surpassing Apple as the most valuable publicly traded company.
The companies generated excitement last year by riding the artificial intelligence wave, and were also lauded by shareholders for their dramatic cost-cutting efforts, which included eliminating thousands of jobs.
In the weeks heading into their earnings reports, investors were buying as if they expected positive surprises. They were left disappointed and nitpicking the numbers.
Alphabet on Tuesday reported 13% revenue growth, the fastest rate of expansion since early 2022. Sales of $86.31 billion topped the average estimate of $85.33 billion, according to LSEG, formerly Refinitiv. Earnings per share of $1.64 beat estimates by 5 cents.
Revenue at Microsoft increased 18% to $62.02 billion, topping the $61.12 billion average analyst estimate. EPS of $2.93 was 15 cents above consensus.
Both companies also beat expectations in their cloud businesses, with Google Cloud reporting 25% growth and Microsoft’s larger Azure and other cloud services expanding by 30%.
The one disappointment from Alphabet was in Google’s ad business, which delivered revenue of $65.52 billion, trailing analysts’ estimates of $65.94 billion, according to StreetAccount. Within ads, YouTube came in just shy of expectations.
Stifel analysts, who recommend buying the stock, said in a quick-take report on Tuesday that Alphabet produced “healthy advertising results, but not enough.”
Brian Wieser, an analyst at media and advertising consultancy Madison and Wall, said the market has unrealistic expectations for Google given its size and dominance.
“In my general conversations with public market investors and sell-side analysts, few have a correct view of the advertising market,” Weiser said. “Many think that growth can continue at double-digit levels for the fastest-growing companies for much longer a period of time than is realistic to expect.”
Alphabet shares dropped almost 6% after the report. Microsoft’s drop was less severe. The stock initially fell by more than 2% and then pared some of its losses.
Microsoft’s outlook was a bit light, overshadowing the earning and revenue beat. The company called for fiscal third-quarter sales between $60 billion and $61 billion, while analysts polled by LSEG had expected $60.93 billion.
Shares of chipmaker AMD also dropped despite better-than-expected revenue numbers and profit that met estimates. The stock, which is up 137% in the past year on excitement about its artificial intelligence processors, fell almost 6% after the announcement.
Attention now turns to Thursday, when Amazon, Apple and Meta all report quarterly results. Like Alphabet and Microsoft, Meta shares have climbed to a record this month. Apple hit its all-time high in December, while Amazon remains about 6% below its record from 2022.
—CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian, Jordan Novet and Kif Leswing contributed to this report
Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.
Dado Ruvic | Array
Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.
The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.
The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.
However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.
Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.
Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.
The stock rose in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected
Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.
The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.
Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.
“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.
Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.
However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.
Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.
The change applies to channels removed for posting Covid-19 or election-related misinformation, according to a letter fromAlphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Previously, those types of offenses carried lifetime bans.
“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding Covid and elections integrity,” Donovan wrote.
YouTube wrote on X that it will be a limited pilot project open to a subset of creators as well as channels that were terminated under policies the company has since retired. YouTube also said its new reinstatement program will launch soon.
Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s not yet clear whether those channels will be reinstated.
This move follows mounting Republican pressure on tech companies to reverse Biden-era speech policies on vaccine and political misinformation. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging YouTube was a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”
In 2021, YouTube said it would remove content that spread misinformation about all approved vaccines.
Donovan wrote that during the pandemic, senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove certain Covid-related videos that did not technically violate YouTube’s policies.
In the letter, Donovan said this pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”
YouTube ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation rules in December 2024, according to Donovan’s letter.
YouTube “will not empower third-party fact-checkers” to moderate content and will continue to enable “free expression” on the platform, Donovan wrote. While Donovan writes that YouTube has not used fact-checkers, the platform has produced programs that are meant to label context on videos.
Similarly, Meta said in January that it had eliminated its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.
YouTube has a feature that will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos. The feature says it provides more context on videos across YouTube with information from third-party sources.
In 2017, Google launched a fact-checking tool that would display labels on search and news results.