New Delhi, Aug. 8 -- It was another busy week of earnings for companies caught up in the artificial-intelligence trade. Good wasn't good enough, and any slippage was met with a selloff. But as Palantir Technologies showed with its Monday afternoon earnings blowout, it's still possible to impress skeptical investors and flip a negative narrative.

Here are my takeaways from the latest round of tech earnings:

Storage chip maker Sandisk reported earnings on Wednesday, at the same time as its former parent, hard-drive storage maker Western Digital. Both companies had earnings beats but offered guidance that spooked investors who are naturally cautious around cyclical stocks.

Both kinds of storage are needed in data centers, so they are down...