A lot of the world is busy digesting Twitter being rebranded to “X,” but more serious things are happening in the world of tech: Worldcoin is here!

I kid. What actually matters today is that we are embarking on another earnings cycle, which means we can study tech’s largest and wealthiest companies’ results to get some perspective on the state of the economy as it relates to tech goods and services. Hardware and software, in other words.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Of course, we’ll see some familiar themes in this cycle, but there are enough new trends going on that I wanted to pause and talk through a few points that we should all look out for.

Note that the earnings season affects the startup world in a few ways. Most importantly, it provides a directional signal: When public tech companies report rapid growth in a particular area of their market, investors gain interest in younger companies that may benefit from a similar wave of demand.

And, of course, startups should care about these results, as they can reprice the public companies that form their core comparable cohort, which can make it easier or harder to fundraise, and help determine exit values.

It’s a big deal, in other words.

As we noted this morning on Equity, this week we’ll hear from Microsoft, Alphabet, Spotify, Snap, Roku, and many more. Given the breadth of companies reporting this week, we are officially into the breach.

Now, on to what we should all keep in mind for this particular earnings cycle! This will be fun, I promise.

Four things to look out for

Where AI hype is turning into dollars

By now, you’re probably more than bored of nearly everyone telling you how AI is about to change everything, bro. We feel you.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/time-for-techs-report-card/