Tech giants across the board are looking to monetize AI as they continue to pour funds into developing technology and cloud services. 

“We have clear paths to AI monetization through ads and cloud, as well as subscriptions,” Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said during Google’s April 25 earnings call. 

“The growth we are seeing across the cloud is underpinned by the benefit AI provides for our customers. We continue to invest aggressively while remaining focused on profitable growth,” Ruth Porat, chief investment officer at Google, said during the call. 

Amazon has also seen “considerable momentum on the AI front where we’ve accumulated a multibillion-dollar revenue run rate already,” CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s earnings call April 30. 

While Amazon and Google work toward monetization of AI, IBM reported that it has generated more than $1 billion through its generative AI and watsonx solutions, Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said during IBM’s April 24 earnings call.  

Similarly, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said during the company’s April 25 earnings call that the tech giant has 350,000 paid customers for its AI services. Microsoft did not disclose how much revenue AI services have brought in.  

Developing AI

Developing AI comes at a cost and tech giants are pouring money into developing the tech. 

“We expect the combination of AWS’ reaccelerating growth and high demand for gen AI to meaningfully increase year-over-year capital expenditures in 2024,” Jassy said.  

Amazon will not “spend the capital without very clear signals that we can monetize,” Jassy said. The AWS cloud coupled with gen AI capabilities give Amazon new avenues for revenue generation and they incur costs for hardware and data centers, Jassy said. 

Even Meta has raised its capital expenditure guidance to $35 billion to $40 billion for 2025 from $30 billion to $37 billion for 2024 “to accelerate our infrastructure investments to support our AI roadmap,” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s Q1 earnings call on April 25. 

Market share

As tech providers develop AI, adoption of the services is also growing. 

“More than 60% of funded gen AI startups and nearly 90% of gen AI unicorns are Google Cloud customers,” Pichai said. 

And Microsoft is providing its Azure OpenAI solution to 65% of Fortune 500 companies, CEO Nadella said during the earnings call. 

Banks are also tapping into the following AI solutions: 

• Amazon Web Services clients include Citizens, NatWest and ING. 
• Azure clients include Ally, Banco Santander and U.S. Bank. 
• Google Cloud clients include BNY Mellon, HSBC and KeyBank. 

Cloud business grows

As AI adoption and investment grows, the computing power required to accomplish these efforts and the frictionless experience of AI could not be achieved without the cloud. 

IBM, Google, Amazon and Microsoft all reported a rise in income driven by cloud services. 

“Overall, we are seeing an acceleration in the number of large Azure deals from leaders across industries, including billion-dollar-plus multiyear commitments announced this month from Cloud Software Group and The Coca-Cola Company,” Nadella said. 

During the quarter, tech providers reported: 

The growth of cloud business has prompted IBM to acquire cloud services provider HashiCorp. Inc. for $6.5 billion as a way to “strengthen our position in today’s hybrid cloud and AI-driven technology landscape,” IBM Chief Executive Krishna said during the company’s earnings call on April 24. 

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