Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, four of the biggest tech companies, together reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday, April 29, with Apple following on Thursday, April 30, and reporting its second quarter numbers. The results showed that surging demand for AI computing capacity is lifting cloud revenue growth across the industry. However, much of that demand for compute seems to be coming from some of the biggest AI startups such as Anthropic and OpenAI. The use of AI continues to boost the ad businesses of tech giants such as Meta and Google. However, perhaps the most important takeaway is that investment required to deliver computing capacity continues to increase, with so-called hyperscalers now planning to spend as much as $725 billion this year – up from the combined $600 billion on capex reported in the previous quarter – much of which is to be used to expand AI-related data centre capacity, buy chips, and cover other related costs.…