On Thursday, three major U.S. tech firms unveiled their first-quarter financial results, revealing a mixed picture of performance across the consumer technology and social platform sectors, alongside key updates on leadership transitions and artificial intelligence strategy.
Leading the pack was Apple, which delivered blowout growth driven by unprecedented demand for its flagship iPhone line. For the three months ending March 31, the Cupertino-based giant reported total revenue climbed 17% year-over-year to $111 billion (£81 billion), with Chinese market sales outpacing all other regions, surging 28% from the same period last year. Outgoing Chief Executive Tim Cook called recent consumer demand for the iPhone “extraordinary,” noting that the iPhone 17 launch marked the most popular new iPhone release in the company’s history.
While iPhone momentum remained strong, sales of other Apple product lines, including Mac desktop and notebook computers and wearable devices such as the Apple Watch, held relatively flat over the quarter. Even so, Cook highlighted that the newly launched lower-priced MacBook Neo has seen “off the charts” consumer interest, helping the company hit an all-time record for first-time Mac buyers during the quarter.
Looking ahead to the second half of 2025, Apple plans to roll out a major update to its Apple Intelligence AI system that will integrate the technology natively into its Siri voice assistant. Cook emphasized that Apple’s approach to AI differs sharply from many of its industry peers: instead of launching a standalone AI feature, the technology will be woven into the core functionality of all Apple devices, with a core focus on protecting user privacy that Cook says makes Apple platforms the best environment for AI experiences. Unlike competitors that have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into developing proprietary large language models from scratch, Apple has opted to partner with established AI leaders including OpenAI and Google to power select features. While critics have labeled Apple a late mover in the current generative AI boom, the partnership strategy also leaves Apple far less exposed to financial risk if industry AI expectations fail to materialize.
The earnings call also marked one of Cook’s final public appearances as CEO, ahead of his planned transition to chairman of the board effective September 1. Cook used the occasion to praise incoming CEO John Ternus, a long-time Apple hardware executive who will take the top leadership role. “I know he will push us to go further than we think is possible in order to deliver products for our users,” Cook said. In his first public comments to analysts as incoming CEO, Ternus confirmed he would maintain Apple’s longstanding tradition of financial discipline and teased a robust pipeline of upcoming products, saying “We have an incredible roadmap ahead…suffice it to say this is the most exciting time in my career at Apple to be building products and services.”
Also releasing quarterly results Thursday was social discussion platform Reddit, which reported explosive 69% year-over-year revenue growth to $663 million for the first quarter. CEO Ladd Huffman told analysts that weekly active users in the U.S. now hit 200 million—more than half of the country’s total population—and the company’s next major growth goal is to convert that weekly audience into daily active users, with a long-term target of 1 billion daily active users globally. “Daily active users is both our mission and also fuel for the business,” Huffman explained.
A growing, high-margin revenue stream for Reddit is licensing its user-generated discussion data to AI developers that use the content to train large language models. Huffman noted that existing data licensing deals with OpenAI and Google have already proven valuable, and will become even more critical as the broader internet becomes increasingly “optimized for AI” rather than authentic human conversation. “At the end of the day, there is no artificial intelligence without actual intelligence,” he said.
Not all big tech earnings were positive Thursday: after releasing its quarterly results, youth-focused gaming platform Roblox saw its share price drop 20% in after-hours trading. While the company reported growth in both total users and revenue over the quarter, CEO David Baszucki told investors that user growth came in well below internal projections, a slowdown he attributed to the recent rollout of stricter age verification checks on the platform. The new protocol restricted communication for users who had not completed age verification and altered the experience for verified users, leading to slower new user acquisition than expected. Investors also reacted negatively to the company’s revised full-year revenue forecast, which came in lower than earlier projections. Roblox, which has been publicly traded since 2021, has yet to report a single profitable quarter since its IPO.