Alphabet Added 12,000 People. Meta Has 4% Fewer. Both Grew Revenue. Neither Filing Says Why.

Ainsley (0:00)

Surviving AI is a podcast about super intelligence and the people selling you a date for it. Every week, we trace the claim, who measured it, who paid for it, and who collects. Then we ask what it means for the person in your seat. When we get it wrong, we say so out loud. Not doom, not hype, signal you can act on. That's agency.

Welcome to Surviving AI. It's Monday the 19th. Here is today's news. 12,000 added, 4,000 fewer, and one corporate ledger that leaves us with a critical unanswered question.

Three of the biggest names in technology, billions more invested in machines, and three very different pictures of what is happening to the people.

Let's start with the giant that grew. In the second quarter, Alphabet spent roughly $45 billion on property and equipment, about twice as much as a year earlier. Revenue climbed 24%, reaching roughly $120 billion, and its workforce grew too. Headcount rose from approximately 187,000 to nearly 200,000 employees. The investment doubled, revenue surged, and the workforce expanded.

Now consider Meta. Revenue rose 28%, topping $61 billion.

Capital spending climbed by roughly two-thirds in the first half of the year, but its workforce moved in the opposite direction. Meta went from approximately 79,000 employees at the end of last year to about 75,000 by the end of June. The business grew, investment surged, headcount fell. The financial reports give us the math. They do not give us the motive. And then there's Amazon, the giant with the missing piece. Its spending on property and equipment jumped from roughly $32 billion to $54 billion in a year. The company says that increase primarily reflects investment in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing business, grew sales by 37%, while additions to equipment roughly tripled. But there's a crucial limitation. Amazon reports headcount for the company as a whole, not for AWS separately. We can see the investment, we can see the business growing, but we cannot isolate what is happening to the workforce inside that business. Three companies, three different workforce patterns, one enormous bet on AI.

At Alphabet, investment and headcount are rising together. At Meta, investment is rising while headcount is falling. At Amazon, the investment is clear, but the workforce picture is incomplete. So here's the question. As billions flow into AI, what happens to the people? Are these companies replacing workers, creating new roles, or finding ways to grow while relying on fewer employees? The numbers give us clues, but they don't tell us the whole story. And that's what we're here to investigate. This is Surviving AI.

Carlo Thompson (3:29)

So welcome in, audience.

Yeah, so another one of those episodes where we're gonna potentially start some controversy. But I mean, I think you could see clearly from the three different companies there that there's stuff happening somewhat not cleanly across the board that kind of represents the top end of the market, if you will, in the economy, suggesting how they're actually, you know, utilizing AI, investing in AI, and some of the returns that they could see. Now, this whole episode is around this idea that revenue capture could be happening.

And it's not really the tide that lifts all the boats relative to the old economy in general. But the perspective is not as clean as it should be, because if that was the case, then you would see every single company kind of doing the same thing as like, you know, Meta potentially, right, where they're laying off and they're getting smaller, and they're gaining efficiency from AI, right? Now, every company could be in a different iteration of how they roll things out and how they look at talent in general and the things that they need in the organization. That's the capitalism system working itself out, right? But ultimately, the bet that a lot of organizations are going to use is the bet on AI and its efficiencies to be able to do the thing that they are there to do, which is make revenue for their shareholders and investors.

Ainsley, I don't know if you're reading something different than I'm reading, but essentially a corporation is around to be able to capture value, right? By selling their products or services. They're not there to employ people. They're part of the economy just by virtue, right? But there's a fiduciary that's there to ultimately lead them into aligning more with their key stakeholders, which is generally shareholders. A lot of organization, they'll come around and say, hey, our stakeholders are our customers and so on and so forth. That's true, yeah? Your customers pay the bills, that's going to give you the revenue, right? But none of that suggests that they need to have a specific employment level, right? Outside a regulatory, that's going to get them to provide in the appropriate product and service that someone is paying for.