Microsoft<\/a>, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta planned to spend about $635 billion on data centres, chips, and other AI infrastructure in 2026, S&P Global has said.<\/p>\nThat figure was up from $383 billion the \u200cprior year and just $80 \u2060billion in 2019.<\/p>\n
Although tech companies have yet to signal cutbacks in those capital investments, persistently high oil prices could \u2060force spending revisions in the first and second quarters, bringing a “really meaningful correction in all equity markets,” Otto said.<\/p>\n
“I think if the capex numbers \u200bget pulled \u200bback, if in fact energy prices \u200bare not reflected in earnings, \u200cthat could be a catalyst,” she added in an interview in Tokyo on Monday.<\/p>\n
Euphoria over AI had carried global stock indexes beyond the highs of 2025, with bright hopes for the trend to run further, but it has lost steam since the conflict.<\/p>\n
At the same time, \u200cenergy costs are becoming a constraint.<\/p>\n
Data centres \u200brequire vast amounts of electricity, making the \u200bAI dependent on power prices \u200band infrastructure capacity.<\/p>\n
At the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston \u200clast week, oil executives warned supply \u200brisks are not \u200bfully reflected in prices, Otto said, raising concerns about further increases with ripple effects for the global economy.<\/p>\n
“We’re seeing this big \u200bquestion around global growth,” \u200cOtto added. “Because if you have energy prices jumping 30%, that’s \u200bgoing to hurt consumers, that’s going to hurt companies.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bRocky Swift; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Rocky Swift TOKYO, March 31 (Reuters) – Massive investments in artificial intelligence that underpinned record runs in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,98947,61,60,167917,167916,44395,167918,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-374355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-capital-investments","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-massive-investments","15":"tag-melissa-otto","16":"tag-sp-global","17":"tag-sp-global-visible-alpha","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}