Tech News · The field notes
Personal Tech — Friday, October 30, 2026
Amazon's AWS accelerates to 39% growth but the stock falls on a record AI spending bill, chip demand stays strong while investors question AI returns, Epoch AI finds chip capacity doubling every nine months, Intel reportedly buys quantum software firm Classiq, and Bedrock Robotics and Collective raise big rounds.
Amazon Q3 2026
- sales $201.9B (+12%) missed, EPS $1.89 missed
- operating income $28.1B (+61%), record 13.9% margin
- AWS $46.0B (+39.3%, sixth straight acceleration), $184B run rate, $578B backlog, Jassy guides >40% growth in 2027 and 2028
- capex $77.3B in quarter, ~$220B for 2026, trailing FCF -$42.4B
- shares -~11% after hours
- Q4 guide $240-247B sales, $28.5-33.5B operating income
Market AI-spending jitters
- Alphabet, Intel, Amazon fell overnight
- Asia chip stocks (SK Hynix, TSMC, Advantest) pressured
- Foxconn chair Young Liu says AI is not a bubble
- Tokyo Electron forecasts 87% operating profit jump to ~$7.4B
- MediaTek says AI demand growth continues for sure, first AI accelerator $2.5B Q4 revenue, Q3 revenue +18.3% to $5.16B
Epoch AI study (Oct 29)
- AI chip capacity added per quarter doubles every ~9.1 months, ~2.5x per year since early 2024, down from ~6x in 2023
- Q2 2026 additions 6.3M H100-equivalents (from 0.8M in Q1 2024)
- Nvidia 3.95M, Google 1.6M
- slowdown not statistically significant, may be lull between chip generations
- Rubin shipping, no sales recognized yet
Intel reportedly buying quantum software firm Classiq for ~$2.3B (Bloomberg report)
Funding
- Bedrock Robotics $600M Series C at $4.1B valuation, co-led CapitalG and Emergence Capital (autonomous construction equipment)
- Collective $100M total ($40M Series B led by General Catalyst, QED, Gradient + $60M growth facility) for AI-native financial OS for solo businesses
Look ahead
- Apple reports Monday, November 2, 2026