Big Tech's AI gold rush isn't slowing down- it's getting more expensive. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all opened their wallets wider than ever this quarter, logging record-breaking capital expenditures on AI chips, servers, and data centers. Microsoft was the top spender at nearly $35 billion, narrowly beating Amazon. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company could increase itslong-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.
The competition among the US's largest companies has led to a total of $155 billion being spent on artificial intelligence development in 2025, surpassing federal expenditures on education and social services.
"We're in a tight demand supply environment and given that revenues are correlated with the timing of deployment of new capacity, we could see variability in cloud revenue growth rates depending on capacity deployment each quarter."