US equity futures rose on Thursday as investors weighed mixed signals from hyperscaler earnings against the impact of surging energy prices on the economic outlook. Futures on the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Dow advanced between 0.3% and 0.8%.
Alphabet shares climbed more than 7% in pre-market trading after the company beat cloud-computing revenue forecasts and reported a sharp increase in enterprise adoption of its AI technologies. Amazon gained over 3% pre-market after delivering earnings that significantly exceeded expectations.
By contrast, Meta sank nearly 10% after projecting a sharp increase in AI-related capital expenditures, stoking concerns that infrastructure buildout may fail to keep pace with anticipated demand. Microsoft also edged lower despite meeting consensus estimates for its AI and cloud services businesses.
Energy prices extended their recent surge amid the ongoing standoff between Iran and the US, a development that is expected to temper the near-term acceleration in US GDP growth. Meanwhile, Apple traded slightly higher ahead of its earnings release.
