AI spending, China and Trump tariffs loom

As Alphabet and Tesla get set to kick off the tech industry’s second-quarter earnings blitz on Wednesday, Wall Street appears to be feeling good.

The Nasdaq closed at a record on Monday, notching its sixth straight day in the green, and is now up 8% for the year after a rocky first quarter.

But what happens over the next 10 days will likely determine whether the rally has legs. Following Wednesday’s earnings announcements, the rest of the megacaps issue results next week, except for Nvidia, which should report in late August. Meta and Microsoft report earnings next Wednesday, with Amazon and Apple set to follow a day later.

Last reporting period, investors worried about the strain of hefty tariffs on technology businesses and on whether big gambles on artificial intelligence would lead to returns for shareholders, or were signs of an inflating bubble.

Three months later, stocks have bounced back, but the the industry is still grappling with the fallout from President Donald Trump’s erratic global tariff policies and uncertainty over where duties on imports will ultimately land. Apple, Amazon and Alphabet all warned in the prior quarter that strained relationships with trading partners could weigh on profits, hurting product sales and ad spending.

And the AI market has only gotten crazier, as tech companies show their willingness to pay astronomical sums for talent in addition to the tens of billions of dollars they’re spending on infrastructure and model development. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg shocked the market in June, shelling out more than $14 billion to hire Scale AI CEO CEO Alexandr Wang and a few of his top staffers as part of an investment into the nine-year-old startup.

Here’s what investors will be closely following from the tech giants as earnings season commences.

Alphabet

Alphabet‘s dominant online ad business took a big hit earlier this year as worries mounted that Trump’s tariff plans could crimp spending. Those fears haven’t subsided.

Revenue growth is expected to come in at 11%, according to LSEG, which would be the slowest rate of expansion for any period in two years. Alphabet shares have just turned positive for the year, still significantly lagging behind the Nasdaq.

Last quarter, Alphabet narrowly beat estimates and fell short on YouTube revenue. Its chief business officer also said trade policies would “cause a slight headwind” to the company’s ads business, primarily from retailers based in the Asia-Pacific region.

Analysts have suggested of late that the business may be back on an upswing, thanks in part to advances in AI. Deutsche Bank analysts noted acceleration in the second quarter, while analysts at Goldman Sachs said the company’s search business is in the “midst of a multi-year transformation.”

BMO Capital Markets analysts echoed that sentiment, writing in a recent note that return on ad spend (ROAS) should be improving.

“As AI monetization continues to evolve, we believe Google will increasingly leverage its over twenty years of AI initiatives to continue expanding ROAS for its advertisers.” the analysts wrote.

Cloud revenue remains another key focus for shareholders eager to see how AI tools are boosting a unit that’s trying to keep pace with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Earlier this year, Alphabet said it would shell out $75 billion to beef up its data centers underpinning its AI and cloud business.

Then there’s the Waymo business, which has been a major source of investment for years. The robotaxi service now operates in five major U.S. cities and its vehicles had driven more than 100 million miles without a human driver or supervisor on board as of July 15.

Tesla

Tesla remains the biggest laggard in the group, with its stock down about 17% this year heading into Wednesday’s earnings report after the bell.

Earlier this month, Tesla reported a 14% year-over-year drop in second-quarter deliveries, marking a second straight quarterly decline.

Automotive revenue in the first quarter fell 20%, and analysts are expecting a similar slide for…