Four tech megacorps intend to collectively fork out roughly $635 billion this year on capex, much of it for datacenters and AI infrastructure \u2013 more than the entire output of Israel’s economy and well beyond all global cloud infrastructure services revenue generated last year.<\/p>\n
The tech titans are all trying to outdo each other by spending eye-watering amounts on capex, the majority of which will go on AI and cloud expansion, but the big four \u2013 AWS, Microsoft, Google and Meta \u2013 are investing at a different scale.<\/p>\n
Amazon says it expects to spend $200 billion<\/a> in 2026, with most of that headed to AWS. Google is aiming to pump $180 billion<\/a> into building and equipping datacenters, while Meta expects capex in the range of $115 billion to $135 billion<\/a>, and Microsoft is running at a pace that implies around $120 billion a year in spending.<\/p>\n That adds up to $635 billion, more than the $610 billion that represented Israel’s entire gross domestic product during 2025, and approaching that of Sweden at $662 billion, according to figures from the IMF<\/a>.<\/p>\n These extraordinary sums show how far the industry leaders are willing to go to gain some kind of advantage in the AI race, even though returns on all the spending have so far failed to live up to expectations<\/a>, and investors are reportedly getting restless. Microsoft’s share price fell about 10 percent after its recent results were announced, for example, due to investors expecting a bigger payoff.<\/p>\n The wider cost for users? The massive splurge on infrastructure is driving shortages of components like memory as manufacturers prioritize chip production that cashes in on the lucrative datacenter market<\/a>, rather than those for everyday PCs and phones.<\/p>\n