AI Industry Development & Policy Dynamics

Amazon’s first-quarter revenue was $181.5 billion, up 17% year over year. AWS posted quarterly revenue of $37.6 billion, up 28% year over year—its highest level in three years—supported by investments in new AI startups. Over the past 12 months, equipment spending totaled $151.0 billion, leading free cash flow to fall to $1.2 billion. E-commerce and advertising maintained steady growth, while shutting down some Fresh and Go physical stores to focus on digital and cloud investments. The market still has doubts about near-term liquidity, but the AI-driven AWS rebound has been recognized.

Microsoft’s latest earnings report shows that cloud growth is slightly above expectations, but AI monetization still hasn’t fully met the market’s expectations. Copilot’s paid users increased to 20 million, with an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $37 billion. Office revenue is higher, but the growth has not satisfied some investors. Capital expenditures of $31.9 billion grew 49%, but this is below analysts’ valuations; delays in infrastructure expansion have become a growth bottleneck. As competition with Amazon and Google accelerates, the stock price has been affected, and investors remain cautious about the prospects for its market share growth.

Meta releases its quarterly earnings report. Revenue was $56.3 billion, up 33% year over year. EPS was 7.31, higher than expected, but daily active users edged down to 3.56 billion. It raised full-year capital expenditures to $125–145 billion, driven by higher data center costs and rising hardware prices. After-hours shares fell by about 7%. At the same time, it laid off employees and launched a new AI model, Muse Spark, to improve efficiency. Facing risks from strict regulations and lawsuits, its long-term profitability remains uncertain.

Google and Microsoft reported earnings after the bell on Wednesday, with both crushing expectations. Alphabet's Q1 2026 revenue reached $109.9 billion, up 22% year-over-year, while Google Cloud brought in $20.03 billion—up 63% from $12.26 billion in Q1 2025. Microsoft posted $82.9 billion in revenue

Alphabet Q1 revenue and EPS both beat expectations. Cloud revenue reached $20 billion, and unfulfilled orders doubled to $460 billion. Capital expenditures were raised to $185 billion, and in 2027 they will be higher than in 2026. Gemini Enterprise users grew, and search queries hit a new high; AI answers are affecting the advertising model. The stock rose about 6% after hours to $370, setting a new all-time high.

NVIDIA’s deep learning vice president says that keeping the cost of running AI models is far higher than labor payroll, showing that in practice AI may not necessarily reduce labor costs. A 2024 MIT study found that AI automation is economically beneficial for about 23% of jobs, while the remaining 77% still rely primarily on human labor. Global tech giants’ investments in AI infrastructure remain high; in the short term, financial pressure and layoffs occur at the same time. However, if the process can be stabilized at a larger scale and with lower oversight costs, there may still be cost reductions and economic benefits in the long run.

Crypto exchange OKX rolled out its Agent Payments Protocol (APP) on Wednesday, an open standard designed to support AI agents conducting full business cycles beyond simple payments. According to OKX, the protocol enables AI bots to "pay for services and pay each other" while handling quoting,

According to Beating, AI platform Rogo designed for high-frequency financial scenarios completed a $160 million Series D funding round in April 2026, led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Sequoia, Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, and J.P. Morgan. The funding came less than three months

According to official sources, a major cryptocurrency exchange has launched the Agent Payments Protocol (APP), an open payment standard for AI Agent commercial transactions on April 29. The protocol enables AI Agents to process single payments, batch payments, usage-based payments, and escrow paymen

According to PANews, on April 29, China's National Development and Reform Commission investment security review office banned a foreign acquisition of the Manus project and required the transaction be terminated. Manus, billed as the world's first general artificial intelligence agent, had

According to Alibaba Cloud, its Bailian platform will reduce the pricing for DeepSeek-V4-Pro model's implicit cache (Implicit Cache) to 1 yuan per million tokens effective April 29, 2026 at 23:59:59 Beijing time. Implicit cache only applies when requests hit the cache; cached input tokens are

BlockBeats message, April 29, a leading exchange will list the USDⓈ-M AIGENSYNUSDT perpetual contract at 14:15 (UTC) on April 29, supporting up to 20x leverage. According to the announcement, AIGENSYN corresponds to the project Gensyn. It is positioned as a decentralized machine intelligence protocol, aiming to integrate data and compute power into a unified open network.

According to ChainCatcher, Nasdaq-listed Eightco Holdings disclosed its latest portfolio holdings on April 29, with total assets valued at approximately $333 million. The holdings include 283.45 million Worldcoin (WLD) tokens, 11,068 ETH, a $90 million

According to ChainCatcher, AI application platform Certifyde announced the completion of a $2 million seed funding round. Investors include K5 Global, Flamingo Capital, and angel investors such as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Honey co-founder George Ruan, and Nutra co-founder Roland

According to Altcoin Buzz, KITE AI mainnet launched on Avalanche on April 29, introducing a dedicated Layer 1 blockchain designed for autonomous AI agents. The platform integrates identity and native payment capabilities to enable AI agents to operate, transact, and scale without friction. Avalanch

According to ChainCatcher, the CAS token from Base ecosystem AI project Caspius surged yesterday afternoon (April 28), reaching a market cap high of $18 million and currently trading at $16.6 million, up 220% in 24 hours. Caspius is an embodied AI data infrastructure project focused on robot

According to PANews, DeepSeek launched its image recognition feature today (April 29), currently in beta testing. Both the web version and mobile app users may be selected for the beta rollout.

Anthropic has announced a suite of creative tool connectors that enable Claude to directly control professional software used by designers and musicians. The initial eight connectors span 3D modeling, visual design, music production, and live performance, with partners including Blender, Adobe,

Liquid announced it has raised $18 million in Series Seed funding to expand its multi-asset trading platform that provides continuous access to cryptocurrencies, equities, commodities, foreign exchange, and pre-IPO assets. The round was co-led by Neo and Left Lane Capital, with participation from se