Karen Weise, A.I. Spending Sets a Record, With No End in Sight, NYTimes, April 29, 2026.
For the past two years, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta have repeatedly set records for how much they are spending on artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, the four giants did it again.
In the first three months of the year, the four companies reported in their financial results, they plowed a total of $130.65 billion into capital expenditures, largely spending on data centers that power A.I. That figure — which was another record — was more than three times what the Manhattan Project cost to develop nuclear bombs and 71 percent higher than what the tech giants spent in the same quarter a year earlier.
All of the companies said they would be spending even more, totaling roughly $700 billion this year. Meta, for one, raised its spending forecast for 2026 to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from its previous prediction of $115 billion to $135 billion. Google also boosted its projection, to at least $180 billion, and said its spending would be “significantly” higher next year.
The big four – Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta can afford it because they “continue to dominate in core businesses that spew cash, such as serving ads on YouTube or Instagram, delivering items in a few hours or tallying cells in Excel.” They've entered into circular relationships and Anthropic and OpenAI which have, in turn, “committed to spending hundreds of billions on computing power that the tech giants provide.” Yada yada so forth and so on et cetera et cetera:
Some of the tech companies have justified their building binge by saying they cannot meet all the demand. But analysts said there were risks if the companies became too dependent on two young customers: OpenAI and Anthropic.
More than 40 percent of Microsoft’s $625 billion in outstanding cloud contracts, for example, come from OpenAI, the company said in January. This week, Microsoft and OpenAI announced new terms that loosened their ties.
Betting so much on OpenAI and Anthropic is a gamble. But even if the start-ups flop, the tech giants are likely to weather the losses because of their size, scale and other businesses, said Matt Stucky, who manages tech investments for Northwestern Mutual.
“The core business,” he said, “is good.”
I think they're taking the economy for a Nantucket sleigh ride.
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