Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta report upbeat Q1 results

But despite bad news on the interest rate front, US tech giants surged in late trading as strong quarterly results from Microsoft and Google's parent Alphabet fueled confidence in the sector. Microsoft posted a 20 percent jump in net profit in the first quarter to nearly 22 billion dollars. Higher than expected AI consumption boosted its cloud business. Revenue in its cloud computing platform Azure grew 21 percent, compared with the previous year when many customers were cutting their cloud spending. Microsoft took an early lead in the race to dominate generative artificial intelligence, thanks to its 13 billion dollar investment in OpenAI. Shares in the software giant surged 4 percent on the earnings news.