Katie Dayton

Welcome to Tech News Briefing.

It's Friday, January 30th.

I'm Katie Dayton for The Wall Street Journal.

Meta and Microsoft have both spent billions on artificial intelligence in recent months.

And now that investment is finally reflected in a rising share price for one of them.

We're taking a look at why the stock market fortunes of these two tech powerhouses are diverging so sharply.

Then, a small group of companies are betting that your old e-bikes and hard drives could help combat China's chokehold on the rare earth metal industry.

Stay with us to find out how it could work.

But first, Microsoft and Meta have been in the doghouse with investors recently.

They're the two biggest spenders when it comes to AI, at a time when the market is starting to question just when all that investment will pay off.

But this week, something shifted.

Meta reported record quarterly sales and saw its stock price climb.

But it was a different story for Microsoft.

Here to break it down for us is WSJ Heard on the Street columnist Dan Gallagher.

So Dan, earlier this week, we had earnings reports from Meta and Microsoft that both slightly exceeded Wall Street's expectations for their December-ended quarter.

But the markets reacted very differently to each company.

What happened?

And what about Microsoft?

I'd love to hold these two stocks up against Alphabet, which has seen a huge boost to its share price in the last six months.

Why is the Google firm outperforming Meta and Microsoft to such an extent?