First‑quarter results from the AI hyperscalers dazzled investors, with revenue and profit eclipsing forecasts. A deeper look at the income statements reveals a sizeable “other income” line that inflated earnings dramatically. Alphabet alone logged $37.7bn in this category, representing more than half of its quarterly net profit and a significant key driver behind the headline overall numbers.

Amazon reported nearly $16bn of other income, up from $2.7bn a year earlier, while Microsoft added $942m for the quarter, bringing its nine‑month total to $7.2bn. The gains stem largely from rising valuations of private stakes in AI start‑ups such as OpenAI and Anthropic, whose market cap has jumped from $183bn to $380bn, allowing investors to book sizable write‑ups.

These accounting boosts translate into real cash flow, as the hyperscalers’ investments have secured massive cloud contracts with Google Cloud, Azure and AWS. Analysts estimate that OpenAI and Anthropic now occupy roughly half of the combined cloud order books for Oracle, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft. The pattern underscores how private AI funding now fuels earnings and shapes the competitive dynamics of the cloud market.