The Tech Company News Brief: How Much Money Did Tech Companies Make Last Quarter?

It's been a busy few weeks, with each of the tech behemoths reporting their earnings for the third quarter of the year. Here's a quick recap of the billions each one of them made:

Google-parent Alphabet saw a whopping 11% year-over-year increase in its revenue during the three months ended Sept. 30. The tech titan made a profit of $19.69 billion on revenues of $76.69 billion in the preceding quarter, compared to a profit of $13.91 billion on revenues of $69.09 billion in the same period of 2022.

The increases were driven by "meaningful growth in Search and YouTube, and momentum in Cloud," Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said in a statement.

Microsoft too reported an increase in its revenues and profit for the three months ended Sept. 30. The Windows maker generated $56.52 billion in revenue and $22.29 billion in income last quarter, compared to the $50.12 billion in revenue and $17.56 billion in net income in the same quarter last year.

As with Google, Microsoft attributed a momentum in cloud computing as a catalyst for the increased sales.

Meanwhile, over at Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social media giant had an eye popping turnaround story. The company made $34.15 billion in revenue, up 23% year over year, but the breakthrough was of course, the profit: up more than 2.5x to $11.58 billion from the $4.40 billion a year ago.

Topping things off, Amazon said its net sales increased 13% year over year to $143.1 billion during the most recent quarter while net income was up to $9.9 billion from $2.9 billion a year ago.

Despite raking in billions, each of these companies laid off thousands of people this year in a bid to save cost and even out the lack of growth from the COVID-19 days when their businesses were booming.

Google ranked #6 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week. Microsoft ranked #8 while Meta was on the #24 spot.

Amazon, Google's Plan to Beat ChatGPT: Invest in Its Competitor ⛲

It looks like Google is partnering with Amazon in funding a startup that promises to compete head to head with Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT.

We are, of course, talking about Anthropic, the San Francisco-based generative AI startup that received an inflow of $1.25 billion from Amazon last month with promises of another cool $2.75 billion.

Well, Anthropic is now adding Google to its list of investors, as the search giant too is investing a cool half a billion dollars in the startup with commitments of up to $1.5 billion in the future.

The combined $6 billion from Amazon and Google, while nothing to scoff at, is still less than half the $13 billion Microsoft has reportedly injected into OpenAI ever since it shook hands with the company in 2019.

What's also interesting is the fact that, as opposed to OpenAI, Anthropic has garnered interest from two major tech giants who compete against each other in the cloud space. It just might seem that companies that are lagging behind in the AI space are trying to play catchup and catch lightning in a bottle, similar to how Microsoft did with its investment in OpenAI.

Also, an interesting fact: Anthropic was co-founded by former OpenAI executives and siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei.

Exciting times ahead!

In Other News.. 📰

• Resident Evil Village on the iPhone could be a preview of Apple’s gaming future — via The Verge.
• Google CEO Sundar Pichai to testify in US antitrust trial — via Reuters.
• Amazon’s Tye Brady discusses generative AI, humanoid robots and mobile manipulation — via TechCrunch.
• A look back at Elon Musk’s first year owning Twitter, in tweets — via CNN.
• Fidelity has marked down the value of Twitter/X by 65% — via Axios.
• Biden unveils U.S. government’s first-ever AI executive order — via CNBC.

And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️

— Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon

*All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page.