Techzine provides an overview of recently released quarterly earnings. Datadog and Akamai were major gainers on the stock market after reporting positive results, while CoreWeave and Cloudflare demonstrate that AI spending and AI-driven layoffs do not always go down well with investors.
Datadog reported revenue growth for the past quarter of 32 percent to $1 billion. Analysts had expected $931.8 million. More striking was the profit figure, which came in at $52.6 million net compared to $24.6 million in the same quarter a year ago. The most staggering growth followed the release of the figures, with Datadog’s stock price rising by over 30 percent. That this company is no exception in the software sector is evident from the fact that Snowflake and MongoDB also rose by over 10 percent in value, and Dynatrace and Elastic by more than 5 percent.
AI deal delivers significant growth for Akamai
Akamai did not quite meet expectations when it came to revenue per share. This came in at $1.61 per share, while the same quarter in 2025 had yielded $1.70. Revenue did, however, increase: this quarter brought in $1.07 billion, 6 percent more than the same quarter a year ago. An unnamed U.S. AI model builder has, however, signed a deal to use Akamai’s AI infrastructure for $1.8 billion over seven years. Following that news, Akamai’s stock price rose 26 percent compared to the previous day.
Major AI spending is everywhere. For CoreWeave, which essentially does nothing but provide AI infrastructure, the combination of sky-high costs and a lower estimate of future revenue than previously projected proved disastrous. Although revenue for the past three months came in at $2.08 billion, well above the $1.97 billion analysts had anticipated, the loss per share was greater than these experts had predicted. While Wall Street had projected a loss of 90 cents per share, the actual figure was $1.12. CEO Michael Intrator nevertheless spoke of a breakthrough: according to him, CoreWeave has reached “hyperscale” for the first time. Ten customers are already spending more than $1 billion on CoreWeave services.
Layoffs are not a silver bullet
We have been skeptical for years about the rationale behind many large-scale layoffs at tech companies. Although the emphasis is often on greater efficiency thanks to AI, we question whether that supposed positive shift is the reason for implementing massive layoffs. There are often other, more obvious reasons to consider. Take the recent round of layoffs at Meta, which was most likely due to the setback it experienced by focusing on the metaverse in recent years, and not because AI is necessarily the primary factor. Incidentally, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that the staff cuts are primarily necessary to free up funds to pay for the construction of AI infrastructure.
Cloudflare is a new example of a tech company that specifically cites AI as the reason for a major round of layoffs. Twenty percent of the CDN specialist’s workforce is being cut from the payroll. For Cloudflare, this is a necessary step to restructure toward an “agile AI-first operating model.” In terms of concrete figures, the company outperformed expectations this quarter, with revenue of 25 cents per share compared to 16 cents in the same quarter a year ago. Projected revenue for all of 2026 stands at $2.81 billion, slightly above the $2.79 billion analysts had anticipated. Bottom line, Cloudflare lost 16 percent of its market value following the news, a sign that the reported figures and stated strategy offer little hope to investors in the short term.