Good morning. Anyone paying attention to David Ellison’s plans for Paramount now that his Skydance is set to take it over on Aug. 7?
According to a new Financial Times report, the son of Oracle’s Larry Ellison plans to instill a “performance-based culture” at the broadcaster formerly known as ViacomCBS. (For which, it must be said, I worked more than a decade ago.) Top priorities include “cutting costs” and streamlining the org chart alongside “stabilizing CBS News” and greenlighting films to improve a spotty track record.
Reasonable, right? And yet it’s an awful lot like what every major legacy broadcaster has been doing since TV and film went into their respective tailspins—reacting.
A lot of smart folks are wondering if Skydance will spend the big bucks to push Paramount+ onto the streaming podium—it lags behind Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and HBO, nevermind YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok—but I think that’s a tactic in search of a strategy. The bigger question: How will Paramount create the kinds of things we want to watch in 2025 and meet today’s eyeballs where they already are?
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Microsoft climbs to $4 trillion market cap on blowout earnings
Microsoft delivered a blockbuster quarter to close its 2025 fiscal year, riding the wave of surging demand for cloud and AI services and sending its stock to new heights in after-hours trading.
For the quarter ended June 30, 2025, Microsoft reported revenue of $76.4 billion, an 18% jump over the previous year. Net income climbed even more swiftly, up 24% to $27.2 billion. Earnings per share reached $3.65, outpacing analyst estimates of $3.37.
“In our largest quarter of the year,” CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on the subsequent earnings call, “we significantly exceeded expectations.”
Investors responded decisively to the upbeat results and bullish AI outlook.
Microsoft’s shares spiked over 7% in after-hours trading, pushing the stock toward record highs and lifting Microsoft’s market capitalization past the $4 trillion mark—cementing its place as one of just two companies to reach that level globally, along with Nvidia.
The reaction underscored Wall Street’s confidence in Microsoft’s strategy, particularly its aggressive investments in cloud infrastructure and its push to commercialize AI tools such as Copilot across its productivity and developer platforms.
The company’s Intelligent Cloud segment—home to Azure—generated $29.9 billion in revenue, up a robust 26%. Azure and other cloud services revenue soared 39% for the quarter, while annual Azure revenue surpassed $75 billion, growing 34% year over year.
The Productivity and Business Processes segment, anchored by Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn, generated $33.1 billion (up 16%), and More Personal Computing brought in $13.5 billion (up 9%), bolstered by a rebound in device demand and rising Xbox content revenue. —Nick Lichtenberg
Meta promises ‘personal superintelligence’ for all
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects to deliver “personal superintelligence for everyone,” but his ambitious bets on AI are affecting the company’s cash flows and are likely to hit expenses even harder as Meta soups up its AI capabilities and continues its hiring spree.
The social media giant said it spent $17 billion on capital expenditures during its fiscal second quarter, mostly on AI infrastructure and data centers, and it expects to continue to spend heavily through 2026.
Still, Meta’s shares soared 11.5% in after-hours trading after delivering blockbuster second-quarter financial results.
Revenue cruised 22% higher to $47.5 billion, and its core advertising business generated $46.6 billion in ad revenue across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Daily active users grew to 3.5 billion people and profit margins improved, with net income rising 36% to $18.3 billion compared to last year.
“The intersection of technology and culture is where Meta focuses,” said Zuckerberg in an Instagram reel defining Meta’s aims for superintelligence. The new lab will focus on developing the next generation of Meta’s models, he said.
Zuckerberg said the company is building an “elite, talent-dense team,” led by one of the world’s youngest billionaires, Alexandr Wang. The new superintelligence team will have access to “unparalleled compute” as Meta builds out new gigawatt+ clusters.
“We’re making all these investments because we have conviction that superintelligence is going to improve every aspect of what we do,” Zuckerberg said. —Amanda Gerut
It’s time for an Apple acquisition, top analyst says
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June left many Wall Street voices feeling oddly nostalgic—and not in a good way.
In a July 30 research note, Dan Ives, a top tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, described the event as “an episode out of Back to the Future” due to Apple’s scant mention of artificial intelligence—“the elephant in the room.”
While rivals are racing ahead with AI, Apple’s WWDC leaned on hardware updates and its services story, keeping its AI roadmap and Siri’s future conspicuously vague.
“Any innovation around AI at Apple is not coming from inside the walls of Apple Park,” Ives wrote, suggesting the company’s days of building transformative technology in-house “may be over.”
“The time has come” for a big acquisition, he added, singling out Perplexity as a “no brainer” acquisition target—even if it costs upwards of $40 billion. Such a move could instantly supercharge Apple’s lagging AI platform and help reposition Siri as the “next AI gateway for consumers,” Ives wrote.
Apple’s largest acquisition remains Beats for $3 billion—a minor sum compared to current AI deals.
Still, Apple faces mounting headwinds: trade tensions, evolving supply chain risks, competition from Asian rivals, and top AI talent departures. While analysts still rate Apple “Outperform”—citing iPhone 17 and services growth—the muted AI narrative has fueled fears Apple risks obsolescence if it doesn’t adapt.
Ives concluded: “This chapter will define Cook’s legacy.” —NL
More tech
—Robinhood Q2 revenue jumps 45% as it closes the gap with Coinbase.
—Big Tech commits to health interoperability. Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and more pledge to improve patient-provider data sharing.
—Figma prices IPO at $33 per share, valuing it at about $19 billion.
—Qualcomm shares drop 4%. Q3 revenue beats estimates, but handset chip revenue and auto sales are soft.
—Marc Benioff on AI-led layoffs: “The humans are not going away. We’re being augmented by these technologies.”
—Arm shares drop 8% as new product spending undercuts profit expectations.
—Google DeepMind debuts AI model for Earth observation data, letting scientists create global maps on demand.
—Grow a Garden, a Roblox game made by a teenager, is a smash hit.
—eBay moves more merch, sending its quarterly revenue and profit higher (and its shares up 10%).
Endstop triggered
