U.S. stock futures slipped early Thursday. Behind the drop was the market’s most persistent worry of 2026: the soaring price tag of the artificial-intelligence build-out. Late Wednesday, Alphabet and Tesla both reported quarterly results, and both gave investors fresh reasons to ask how quickly all that spending will pay off.

As of around 4:00 a.m. ET, Nasdaq 100 futures were down about 0.7%, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures each fell roughly 0.5%. The pullback left the major averages on track to open lower, with technology and megacap names leading the retreat.

Alphabet: strong revenue, a bigger spending bill

Alphabet delivered on the top line. Revenue rose 24% year over year in the second quarter, and earnings came in at $9.11 a share, though that figure was flattered by unrealized gains on equity investments. What unsettled the market was the outlook. The Google parent raised its 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to a range of $195 billion to $205 billion and signaled further increases in 2027. Capex reached $44.9 billion in the quarter alone, most of it for AI infrastructure, and the company reported negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion. Shares fell close to 4% in premarket trading. For investors already wary of how much the market leans on a few giant tech names, the message landed awkwardly the concentration risk in a handful of megacaps.

Tesla: record deliveries, missed profit

Tesla told a similar story of growth bought at a high price. Revenue climbed about 26% to $28.24 billion, beating estimates, and the company posted record quarterly deliveries of 480,126 vehicles, well above the roughly 406,600 Wall Street expected. But profit disappointed. Adjusted earnings of $0.33 a share fell short of the roughly $0.55 consensus, as capital spending jumped 142% from a year earlier to $5.79 billion and quarterly cash burn reached $3.25 billion. Much of that outlay is going toward AI, robotics and the company’s robotaxi push. The stock dropped 5% to 6% before the bell.

Together, the two reports revived a debate that has trailed the market all year: whether the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into AI data centers will earn the returns investors are pricing in. Skeptics, including short-seller Michael Burry, have argued that aggressive capital spending is being under-counted in reported earnings as one contrarian case lays out. Bulls counter that demand for computing power is real and still growing. Thursday’s premarket action showed which side had the upper hand, at least for now.

Yields and oil add pressure

The equity jitters came against an unfriendly macro backdrop. The 10-year Treasury yield hovered near 4.63%, close to a two-month high, keeping borrowing costs elevated for households and companies. Oil prices stayed firm after government data showed a surprise build in U.S. crude inventories, leaving energy costs a wild card for the inflation outlook. Higher yields tend to weigh most on the richly valued growth stocks that dominate the Nasdaq, and they raise the bar for the target prices analysts assign to those names.

On the economic calendar, weekly jobless claims are due before the open. According to the Labor Department, initial claims fell to 208,000 in the prior week, the lowest in more than two months and a sign the labor market remains resilient. Investors will watch whether that strength held. Honeywell reports results before the bell, and chipmaker Intel is scheduled to report after the close. All of it sets up next week’s Federal Reserve meeting on July 28-29, where policymakers are widely expected to hold interest rates steady; the Fed is now in its pre-meeting blackout period.

What to Watch Today

  • Tech open: how deeply Alphabet and Tesla drag the Nasdaq, and whether other megacaps follow.
  • Jobless claims: a reading near or below 208,000 would reinforce the resilient-labor-market story.
  • Yields: the 10-year Treasury near 4.63% — any move higher adds pressure on growth stocks.
  • Earnings: Honeywell before the open, Intel after the close.
  • Oil: whether crude holds its recent gains and keeps energy costs elevated ahead of the Fed.

For now, the pre-open tone is defensive, with the AI-spending question — not corporate revenue — driving sentiment into the session.