Big Tech Earnings Oct 28-29: Copilot's 50 Million Users

Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon report earnings on October 28 and 29, and for software developers the stakes are unusually concrete. Big Tech earnings this week will show whether the AI coding boom is turning into real revenue — or just real spending. Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, Amazon’s Kiro and Alphabet’s Gemini Code Assist all face the same question from investors: what do these tools actually earn?

The calendar is set. Alphabet and Microsoft report on Wednesday, October 28, and Amazon follows on Thursday, October 29. They lead a week of ten major reports that also includes Visa and Coca-Cola on Tuesday, Eli Lilly and Mastercard on Thursday, and Exxon Mobil, AbbVie and Chevron on Friday. But only Wednesday and Thursday touch the developer-tools market directly, and that is where the sharpest questions will land.

Microsoft on Oct. 28: Copilot is the number to watch

Microsoft has given the clearest trail of developer-tool data of the three. On its fiscal 2026 second-quarter call, CEO Satya Nadella said paid Copilot subscribers had passed 4.7 million, up 75% year over year, with Copilot Pro+ subscriptions for individual developers up 77% quarter over quarter.

By the third quarter, the framing had shifted from seats to strain. Nadella said GitHub was seeing unprecedented growth driven by agentic coding, and that the company was working hard to scale to meet demand. Agentic coding means longer sessions, more tool calls and far more tokens per developer than autocomplete ever required.

The most recent datapoint came from the fiscal fourth quarter, when Nadella told investors, “When it comes to developers, GitHub Copilot now has 50 million users.” That same quarter, Microsoft introduced usage-based billing and reported continued Business and Enterprise seat growth plus significant consumption revenue after the new model went into effect.

Here is the catch: do not divide 50 million by 4.7 million and call it growth. The first figure counts paid subscribers, and the second counts users, a broader group that can include free-tier accounts. Microsoft changed the unit it reports, so the two numbers describe different populations. The useful question for October 28 is which unit Microsoft chooses next. If it returns to paid subscribers, investors can measure conversion. If it keeps reporting users and adds consumption revenue, the usage-based billing change is carrying more of the story.

Alphabet on Oct. 28: Gemini Code Assist inside Google Cloud

Alphabet gives developers the thinnest paper trail of the three. No on-record Alphabet executive quote about coding tools is tied to this report, and no dated Gemini Code Assist adoption figure has surfaced in verified sources. Reviews describe Gemini Code Assist as an enterprise and plugin-style product, which places it inside the broader Google Cloud pitch.

That makes Alphabet’s call a test of disclosure as much as performance. Alphabet’s third-quarter 2026 call is listed for 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time, which is 4:30 p.m. ET, on October 28. Analysts will press on Google Cloud demand, backlog and margins. Developers should listen for any number attached to Gemini inside coding workflows, even a passing mention of usage or enterprise seats. Silence would itself be informative, because it would suggest Google still treats coding assistance as a feature rather than a product line.

Google’s model ecosystem is also getting more crowded. Outside models now run on its platform, which means Google Cloud earnings are partly about whether customers pick Google’s own coding tools or simply rent Google’s servers for someone else’s.

Amazon on Oct. 29: Kiro, AWS and a $200 billion capex line

Amazon’s developer story runs through AWS. On the company’s second-quarter 2026 call, CEO Andy Jassy called Kiro its agentic coding service, and said Amazon built it partly because customers — and Amazon itself — wanted those capabilities. The company dogfoods its agents on internal engineering, which gives it a feedback loop rivals cannot copy easily.

The same call carried the spending number. Jassy said Amazon plans to invest approximately $200 billion in cash capital expenditure in 2026, the majority of which supports AI and AWS. That is the figure investors will test on October 29: does the plan change, and is the capacity filling with paying workloads?

Sources disagree on the exact timing for the Microsoft and Amazon releases, with some placing them after the close and others listing different windows. Check each company’s investor relations page on the day before you plan around a call, rather than trusting any single calendar.

Capex is the real developer-tools story

Coding assistants look cheap per seat, yet they sit on some of the most expensive hardware ever deployed. Every autocomplete, test generation and multi-file refactor consumes accelerator time. When Amazon commits roughly $200 billion in 2026 cash capital expenditure, mostly for AI and AWS, the implicit bet is that demand like agentic coding will fill those racks.

Investors have started asking whether that bet pays back. A market preview on October 23 warned that next week brings major risks for the stock market just as the AI trade keeps faltering. Cloud earnings are the moment companies must show revenue to match the build-out.

Other hyperscalers are moving in the same direction. Meta raised AI capital expenditure to $145 billion while Tesla cut spending, and the contrast shows how different the pressure looks for companies without a cloud business to rent capacity out. Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon can resell their compute to developers, which is exactly why coding products matter to their pitch.

Stock reactions will hinge on cloud growth and spending guidance, not on a Copilot milestone. That is the uncomfortable truth for developer-tool coverage: a coding-assistant metric might fill thirty seconds of a ninety-minute call. Roadmaps move for different reasons. A raised capital plan can mean more regions, more GPU inventory and lower prices for inference. A trimmed one can mean tighter rate limits and fewer free tiers. Watch the guidance language rather than the headline revenue beat.

Sources and Resources

Reporting for this article is based on the Tech Insider analysis: Big Tech Earnings Oct 28-29: Copilot Hits 50M Users.

Which companies report on Oct 28 and 29?

Alphabet and Microsoft report on Wednesday, October 28, and Amazon follows on Thursday, October 29.

How many Copilot users does Microsoft report?

GitHub Copilot now has 50 million users, per Microsoft’s fiscal fourth-quarter call — a broader figure than the earlier 4.7 million paid subscribers.

What is Amazon’s Kiro?

Kiro is Amazon’s agentic coding service, built partly for Amazon’s own engineers and sold through AWS.

Does Alphabet disclose Gemini Code Assist numbers?

Not in verified sources tied to this report. Analysts will watch for any usage or seat figure on the October 28 call.

Why does capital spending matter for developers?

Because it sets future prices, rate limits and free tiers: a raised plan can mean more capacity, while a trimmed one can mean tighter limits.

Conclusion

October 28 and 29 will not be decided by a single Copilot number or a single cloud revenue line. They will be decided by whether Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon can show that the AI coding boom pays for the enormous infrastructure behind it. Developers should listen past the headlines — to the billing models, the guidance and the silences — because that is where next year’s tooling prices are being set.

Big Tech Earnings Oct 28-29: Copilot’s 50 Million Users