Investors still trust Google more than Meta when it comes to spending their money on AI

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet. Source: Alphabet Meta and Alphabet both beat expectations in their earnings reports on Wednesday, each recording their fastest growth in years. They also lifted their guidance for capital expenditures for the year, telling investors that they're going to keep pouring money into artificial intelligence infrastructure. But despite their similarly upbeat results, Wall Street had very different reactions. Alphabet shares popped 7% in extended trading, while Meta's stock fell 7%. It's the continuation of a theme that's hampered Meta throughout much of the generative AI boom. While Alphabet and fellow hyperscalers Microsoft and Amazon all have massive cloud infrastructure businesses, allowing them to turn their AI investments into revenue, Meta has no such offering. That makes AI spending a harder sell for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg , because the return on investment has to show up elsewhere, and that mostly means increased ad revenue and profitability. All four tech giants reported quarterly results on Wednesday. Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon all showed stronger-than-expected growth in their cloud divisions. Meta's stock is the only one of the four trading lower. Heading into the earnings reports, Alphabet's stock price was up 118% over the past year, trouncing Meta's 21% gain. Amazon is up 40% and Microsoft has risen about 8%. "Google is outperforming its peers which is well reflected in the current valuation," analysts at D.A. …