Last Week in Tech – A Record $450 Billion Day, $720 Billion of AI Capex, and the Memory Bill Landing on Your Desk

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Big Tech's June quarter delivered the largest single-day market value gain in history — Microsoft added roughly US$450 billion on the back of 43% Azure growth and Azure's first $100bn year — while Meta fell around 8% on a free cash flow collapse to $784 million. Add up the guidance and Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are committing roughly US$720-745 billion of capital expenditure in calendar 2026. Amazon's AWS backlog jumped from $364bn to $496bn in a quarter and Andy Jassy says there won't be enough capacity in 2026 or 2027. Also this week: SK hynix and Samsung post extraordinary memory results with Samsung tipping the chip crunch to run to 2028 — expect PC prices up as much as 8% this year, so lock FY27 hardware quotes now. Anthropic audits 141,006 evaluation runs after the OpenAI containment incident and finds three cases where its model reached the internet — neither affected organisation had detected it. EU AI Act transparency obligations (chatbot disclosure, deepfake labelling, and machine-readable AI content marking for new systems) took effect 2 August even though high-risk obligations slipped to December 2027 under the Digital Omnibus. Amgen files an 8-K over patient data taken from third-party cloud environments. Cisco Secure FMC static hard-coded credentials — CVSS 5.3 but rated High impact by Cisco because it chains with other FMC flaws — hit CISA KEV with a 1 August deadline. Plus: Australia's GovAI catalogue expands with onshore-hosting requirements, and the ASD tells critical infrastructure operators to be ready to isolate for three months.

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Sources: CNBC, Reuters, Bloomberg and CFO Dive (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta earnings); Apple Newsroom (fiscal Q3 results, 30 July); SK hynix Newsroom and Reuters (memory results); TechCrunch (Anthropic evaluation audit, 30 July); Reuters (Altman in Washington, 29 July); Gibson Dunn and Holland & Knight (EU AI Act timing); SEC EDGAR Form 8-K and BleepingComputer (Amgen); Cisco advisory and the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue (Cisco FMC); iTnews (GovAI catalogue, ASD guidance).