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<\/p>\n Read in app<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n This story is available exclusively to Business Insider On earnings calls this week, Big Tech companies reported significant AI spending. Big Tech’s AI gold rush isn’t slowing down\u2014 it’s getting more expensive.<\/p>\n Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all opened their wallets wider than ever this quarter, logging record-breaking capital expenditures<\/a> on AI chips, servers, and data centers.<\/a><\/p>\n Microsoft was the top spender at nearly $35 billion, narrowly beating Amazon. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company could increase its long-term asset spending, or capital expenditure (capex), by as much as 24% next year. Each company said it planned to spend even more on capex going forward.<\/p>\n A few recent deals exemplify this trend. Amazon this week opened an $11 billion data center in Indiana, part of its massive AI supercluster called Project Rainier, and said it would spend $5 billion on data centers in South Korea. Microsoft recently joined a consortium of investors\u00a0to buy 50 data centers in the US and Latin America for $40 billion. <\/p>\n Even Apple, a notoriously restrained spender compared to the other hyperscalers, told investors that it expects capex spending to increase in the next fiscal year.<\/p>\n Investors are watching closely: companies showing early AI payoffs, like Google, are being rewarded, while others \u2014 like Meta \u2014 are running out of time to prove the spending spree is worth it.<\/p>\n “After all the expensive hires and the capex ramp, Meta’s grace period for showing investors something on the non-core AI side is nearly up,” Bernstein senior analyst Mark Shmulik said Wednesday in a research note.<\/p>\n The question for investors: which of these giants can turn that spending into actual AI returns \u2014 and which are just building costlier foundations for the future?<\/p>\n Microsoft spent a record $34.9 billion in capex in the first quarter of its fiscal year.<\/p>\n Matthias Balk\/picture alliance via Getty Images <\/p>\n Capital expenditures in the company’s most recent fiscal quarter were driven by growing demand for cloud and AI offerings, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said Wednesday.<\/p>\n The nearly $35 billion in spending represents a 74% increase from the same time period last year.<\/p>\n Roughly half of that spend went primarily to GPUs and CPUs, which Hood referred to as “short-lived assets.”<\/p>\n Microsoft spent $11.1 billion on data center leasing alone for the quarter.<\/p>\n The company previously forecasted $30 billion in capex for the quarter.<\/p>\n Amazon had the second biggest spend with plans to nearly triple it next year<\/p>\n Reuters <\/p>\n
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\n Each said the spending spree will continue into 2026 and be even bigger than previously reported.
\n Some investors are concerned about the risks of an AI bubble.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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