Block and Cloudflare both report first-quarter results after the close Thursday — Block at 5 p.m. ET, Cloudflare at the same hour. [1] The tape will be carrying Cerebras-pricing chatter and a Friday non-farm payrolls print, both of which set the read on consumer and AI-edge demand the two companies will be measured against.

Block guides Q1 gross profit to roughly $2.8 billion, up 22 percent year-on-year. Cash App active monthly users sit at 59 million; gross-profit growth on the Cash App segment is guided to 33 percent. [2] The company's January announcement of a workforce cut from over 10,000 to under 6,000 employees — a 40 percent reduction — has been priced as margin tailwind. The print's first read is whether that cut is showing up as 2026 operating-leverage gain or as a one-time restructuring charge that drags reported numbers below the adjusted line.

Cloudflare guides Q1 revenue to $620 to $621 million, up 29 to 30 percent year-on-year, with adjusted EPS at $0.23. [3] Workers AI is the watched line. Autonomous-agent traffic across the Cloudflare network more than doubled in January, per the company's last update. [4] The MCP-gateway positioning — Cloudflare Workers as the deployment layer for agentic AI clients across enterprise networks — has driven the stock's 18 percent April rally.

Both names print into a tape that is already pricing in Cerebras at $40 billion. If the Monday-evening Palantir number lands soft, the Tuesday-Wednesday tape compresses AI-platform multiples and Cloudflare's Workers AI lift. If Palantir clears, Cloudflare gets the carry. Block sits one degree removed from the AI-rotation but is exposed to the same consumer-spending readout the Friday payrolls number will set. [5]

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco