The news: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are collectively planning between $595 billion and $625 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, much of which will expand AI data center infrastructure. This suggests AI capabilities across search, commerce, social, and productivity platforms will develop rapidly.

• Microsoft’s annual capex is projected to reach $105 billion, up 19% YoY.
• Meta forecast an increase in investment of at least 59% YoY, with capex as high as $135 billion.

Alphabet and Amazon outlined even larger plans, unsettling investors and triggering a share price decline for Amazon.

• Alphabet forecast up to $185 billion in capex, a 102% YoY increase and 487% higher spend than in 2022—the year before large language models hit the mainstream.
• Amazon announced a 2026 capex of $200 billion, a 56% YoY increase.

Apple, however, is the Big Tech outlier: Its capex declined 19% YoY in December 2025, per Sherwood News. That drop highlights how the company could be more comfortable leaning on hardware sales, services, and subscriptions to drive profits and partnerships to support AI feature development.

What it means: The scale and speed of these investments means marketers and consumers should expect accelerated rollouts of AI-driven ad products, automation tools, and targeting capabilities across major platforms.

On the downside, investor unease and sharp market value changes show uncertainty around the timeline for AI returns—Big Tech players shed nearly $1 trillion in market value following their earnings reports, per CNBC.

Why it matters: Because this spending is concentrated among a handful of dominant platforms, businesses may become even more dependent on Big Tech partners for media, data, and AI-powered performance optimization.

This capex spree also marks a structural shift compared with pre-pandemic investment changes. Big Tech players generally increased spending only moderately between 2018 and 2019— Alphabet’s capex actually went down 6.4% YoY. This further indicates that today’s surge is far from business as usual.

Implications for the industry: Big Tech’s AI bets are pushing further into a high-stakes phase. Unprecedented infrastructure spending is putting pressure on platforms to monetize capacity. If AI doesn’t meaningfully improve search, commerce, and productivity, scrutiny from investors will increase, potentially pushing companies to focus spending on near-term projects that offer more immediate returns.