The Financial Post in its Friday edition says that Alphabet's Google is seeing a clear payoff from its AI spending, while Meta Platforms is lagging. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says the two companies' results were part of a flood of financial information Wednesday, when Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft all delivered their numbers within the span of two minutes. The four companies are the largest spenders on AI data farms, putting them at the centre of an infrastructure build-out that's expected to cost trillions of dollars. Meta and Alphabet both tacked on another $10-billion to their budget -- taking the quartet's total, estimated spending to as much as $725-billion for 2026 (all figures U.S.). A key question among investors and analysts now is whether that massive spending is providing tangible results. Google was able to point to solid growth at its cloud computing unit, which recorded sales of $20-billion last quarter. Meta had a harder time making its case to investors. Its shares tumbled as much as 10 per cent after boosting full-year capital expenditures to as much as $145-billion. "Meta's standalone app hasn't had the amount of engagement," Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh said in a note.