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A view of Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California, United States on March 23, 2024. 

Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu | Getty Images

Advertising is so back.

After a brutal 2022, when brands reeled in spending to cope with inflation, and a 2023 defined by layoffs and cost cuts, the top digital advertising companies have started growing again at a healthy clip.

Meta, Snap and Google all reported first-quarter results this week, with revenue growth that exceeded analysts estimates and at rates not seen in at least two years. Their financials were primarily driven by improvements across their ad businesses.

The companies entered earnings season in a favorable position in that their numbers would be comparable to historically weak periods. But investors and analysts were cautious in their expectations, given the political and economic instability in various markets across the globe and the ongoing challenges posed by high consumer prices.

Meta, which was the first in the group to report results, put some fears to rest on Wednesday, showing a 27% jump in first-quarter revenue to $36.5 billion. For the Facebook parent, it was the strongest rate of expansion since 2021.

“When Meta was in its dark days two years ago, the company knew what they had to do to get back on track,” analysts at Bernstein wrote in a note after the earnings report. “To their credit, Meta defended the core.”

That dark era was defined by the combination of macroeconomic challenges and Apple’s iOS privacy change, which made it harder for social media companies to target users with ads. Meta lost two-thirds of its value in 2022 and was forced to dramatically cut headcount.

A smartphone is displaying Facebook with the Meta icon visible in the background.

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Meta responded by rebuilding its ad system, with the help of hefty investments in artificial intelligence, so it could deliver value to brands despite the roadblock imposed by Apple. The stock almost tripled in 2023.

While the company’s first-quarter results beat estimates across the board, the shares tanked on Thursday after CEO Mark Zuckerberg focused his post-earnings commentary on the many ways Meta is spending money in areas outside of advertising, notably the metaverse.

“We’ve historically seen a lot of volatility in our stock during this phase of our product playbook where we’re investing in scaling a new product but aren’t yet monetizing it,” Zuckerberg said on the earnings call late Wednesday.

The Bernstein analysts, who recommend buying the shares, said Meta’s ad revenues were led by strength in online commerce, gaming, entertainment and media, and that China-based ad demand “remained strong.” Meta has benefited from a surge in spending from Chinese discount retailers like Temu and Shein.

“Without sounding overly religious, you either believe in Zuck or you don’t, and we do,” the analysts wrote.

‘Incrementally positive’

Alphabet followed on Thursday, reporting ad revenue for the first quarter of $61.66 billion, up 13% from the year prior, with YouTube ad revenue jumping 21% to $8.09 billion. The company as a whole grew 15%, a rate last seen in 2022, and the stock shot up 10% on Friday, the sharpest rally since 2015.

During the quarterly call with investors, Alphabet finance chief Ruth Porat said the company is “very pleased” with the momentum of its ad businesses.

Analysts at Citi wrote in a note on Friday that the broader advertising environment is “clearly strengthening,” pointing to accelerating growth within Google Search and YouTube.

“We emerge from Q1 results incrementally positive on shares of Alphabet,” the analysts wrote, maintaining their buy recommendation.

Snap shares rocketed 28% on Friday after the company reported a 21% increase in revenue to $1.19 billion, the strongest growth in two years. In each of Snap’s past six quarters, sales either grew in single digits or declined.

The company said it’s seeing accelerating demand for its ad platform and benefiting from an improved operating environment, according to its investor letter.

Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a report on Friday that Snap delivered a “much-needed” beat, and that its ad stack is back on track. The analysts, who have a buy rating on the stock, said investors appear “most encouraged by the ad platform investments, which are showing increasing promise.”

Despite the rally, Snap shares are still down 14% for the year.

Investors will get a clearer picture of the digital ad market next week, with Pinterest reporting on Tuesday alongside Amazon, which has emerged as a giant in online ads. Reddit will follow on May 7, reporting earnings for the first time since the social media company’s initial public offering in March.

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Elon Musk’s X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

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Elon Musk's X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

Elon Musk looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X experienced a brief outage on Saturday morning, with tens of thousands of users reportedly unable to use the site.

About 25,000 users reported issues with the platform, according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users to monitor issues with various platforms.

Roughly 21,000 users reported issues just after 8:30 a.m. ET, per the analytics platform.

The issues appeared to be largely resolved by around 9:55 a.m., when about 2,000 users were reporting issues with the platform.

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X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Additional information on the outage was not available.

Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X, formerly known as Twitter in 2022.

The site has had a number of widespread outages since the acquisition.

The site experienced another outage in March, which Musk attributed at the time to a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote in a post at the time.

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Businesses are turning to artificial intelligence tools to help them navigate real-world turbulence in global trade.

Several tech firms told CNBC say they’re deploying the nascent technology to visualize businesses’ global supply chains — from the materials that are used to form products, to where those goods are being shipped from — and understand how they’re affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

Last week, Salesforce said it had developed a new import specialist AI agent that can “instantly process changes for all 20,000 product categories in the U.S. customs system and then take action on them” as needed, to help navigate changes to tariff systems.

Engineers at the U.S. software giant used the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-page document of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S., to inform answers generated by the agent.

“The sheer pace and complexity of global tariff changes make it nearly impossible for most businesses to keep up manually,” Eric Loeb, executive vice president of government affairs at Salesforce, told CNBC. “In the past, companies might have relied on small teams of in-house experts to keep pace.”

Firms say that AI systems are enabling them to take decisions on adjustments to their global supply chains much faster.

Andrew Bell, chief product officer of supply chain management software firm Kinaxis, said that manufacturers and distributors looking to inform their response to tariffs are using his firm’s machine learning technology to assess their products and the materials that go into them, as well as external signals like news articles and macroeconomic data.

“With that information, we can start doing some of those simulations of, here is a particular part that is in your build material that has a significant tariff. If you switched to using this other part instead, what would the impact be overall?” Bell told CNBC.

‘AI’s moment to shine’

Trump’s tariffs list — which covers dozens of countries — has forced companies to rethink their supply chains and pricing, with the likes of Walmart and Nike already raising prices on some products. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024, according to census data.

Uncertainty from the U.S. tariff measures “actually probably presents AI’s moment to shine,” Zack Kass, a futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy last month.

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“If you wonder how hard things could get without AI vis-a-vis automation, and what would happen in a world where you can’t just employ a bunch of people overnight, AI presents this alternative proposal,” he added.

Nagendra Bandaru, managing partner and global head of technology services at Indian IT giant Wipro, said clients are using the company’s agentic AI solutions “to pivot supplier strategies, adjust trade lanes, and manage duty exposure dynamically as policy landscapes evolve.”

Wipro says it uses a range of AI systems — both proprietary and supplied by third parties — from large language models to traditional machine learning and computer vision techniques to inspect physical assets in cross-border transit.

‘Not a silver bullet’

While it preferred to keep company names confidential, Wipro said that firms using its AI products to navigate Trump’s tariffs range from a Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer with factories in Asia to an automotive parts supplier exporting to Europe and North America.

“AI is a powerful enabler — but not a silver bullet,” Bandaru told CNBC. “It doesn’t replace trade policy strategy, it enhances it by transforming global trade from a reactive challenge into a proactive, data-driven advantage.”

AI was already a key investment priority for global firms prior to Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements on April. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders ranked AI and generative AI in their top three technologies for investment in 2025, according to a report by Capgemini published in January.

“There are a number of ways AI can assist companies dealing with the tariffs and resulting uncertainty.  But any AI solution’s success will be predicated on the quality of the data it has access to,” Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CNBC.

The venture capitalist said that one of his portfolio companies, FourKites, uses supply chain network data with AI to help firms understand the logistics impacts of adjusting suppliers due to tariffs.

“They are working with a number of Fortune 500 companies to leverage their agents for freight and ocean to provide this level of visibility and intelligence,” Agarwal said.

“Switching suppliers may reduce tariffs costs, but might increase lead times and transportation costs,” he added. “In addition, the volatility of the tariffs [has] severely impacted the rates and capacity available in both the ocean and the domestic freight networks.”

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Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

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Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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