The world's largest technology companies are sharply increasing capital spending as they race to lead in artificial intelligence. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta are forecast to spend more than $344 billion together in 2025, mostly on building data centers to power AI models, the Japan Times reports.
Microsoft, which spent a record $24.2 billion last quarter, plans to increase capital expenditures to $30 billion , linking them to the development of cloud services and AI infrastructure. The company has already recorded a 39% increase in Azure sales, which exceeded analysts' expectations. CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that Microsoft is "leading the wave of AI infrastructure." By the way, the company recently entered the "$4 trillion club", overtaking Apple along with NVIDIA.
Amazon spent $31.4 billion in the quarter, nearly double the amount it spent a year ago. But investors were disappointed: its cloud division showed weak growth, sending the company's shares down 8.1% . Analysts predict that Amazon Web Services' margins will remain under pressure at least until 2026.
Alphabet , the owner of Google, has raised its capital expenditure forecast by $10 billion to $85 billion and plans even greater investments in 2026. CEO Sundar Pichai stressed that the investments are necessary to meet the growing demand for cloud services.
Meta Platforms raised the lower end of its 2025 spending forecast and plans to ramp it up even faster. The company is building large data centers and luring top AI researchers. It recently created a Superintelligence division to develop human-level AI. Strong ad sales and an upbeat revenue outlook sent Meta shares up more than 8%, suggesting that AI spending is starting to pay off.
Apple looks modest against this backdrop: its capital spending for the nine months to June 28 was $9.47 billion , up 45% from a year ago, a significant portion of which is also focused on AI. CFO Kevan Parekh expects “significant, but not exponential, growth” in spending going forward.
Analysts note that for Big Tech, the current strategy is to compete for the AI market. As a Forrester expert noted , Google and other companies are simply forced to spend huge amounts of money to keep up with OpenAI and competitors .