Hey listeners, your money briefing is on a break, but we're still here to keep you informed on important money matters.

Today, we've got a peek under the hood of the U.S. economy, courtesy of earnings season and company's financial reports.

Hey, listeners, it's Tuesday, August 5th. I'm Spencer Jacob for the Wall Street Journal,

and this is What's News and Earnings. Our look at the broad themes that stood out in the latest

earnings season. So earnings season continues, but six of the companies that have been on everyone's

minds, the Magnificent Seven, have shown us how they did in the last quarter, and more importantly,

what they're planning to do with some of those billions of dollars in cash flow.

Heard on the street writer Asa Fitch, who also co-authors the journal's new AI newsletter, is here to shed some light on their results and the capital expenditure Bonanza.

So ASA is... Bonanza. So, Asa, if my math is correct, the four hyperscalers, that's Amazon, Meta,

Microsoft, and Google, his parent as alphabet, that are investing the most in AI infrastructure,

all of them members of the MAC 7, plan to

invest more than $300 billion this fiscal year and close to $400 billion in the coming 12 months,

mostly on AI stuff. What happened to being capital light? Those days are gone. Today,

the watchword is who can spend the most money on AI because AI is the thing

that's going to drive forward these businesses in the near future and the long future, at least

in the minds of many of the leaders of these tech companies. So you can't afford to not spend

money on AI. And you can't afford to spend perhaps less than your competitor on AI because,

first of all, you have the money.

These tech companies are minting money.

It's not like they're sort of going to the piggy bank, borrowing tons of money, getting big into debt

because they want to splurge on AI.

They're getting money out of their business.

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