In 1987, Nobel Prize-winning economist Bob Solow famously observed, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” This proclamation became known as the productivity paradox. Ironically, Solow’s statement preceded the greatest productivity boom since the dawn of the computer age which subsequently came to fruition in the 1990’s. It can be argued that a similar pattern is being seen today where AI is everywhere but generally not showing up in earnings numbers or productivity statistics…yet.
In this Breaking Analysis we squint through the latest earnings reports from Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon to understand what’s happening in cloud, evaluate the impact or lack thereof of AI on cloud earnings momentum and explain how we think about the future impact of generative AI and cloud.