Hyperscalers dial up capex
- Big cloud providers are on track for roughly $650–700 billion in capex for 2026, a ~36% year‑over‑year rise. (x.com) - Forecasts put cumulative spending around $4.5 trillion over 2025–2030, with GPU and data‑center builds spiking. (x.com) - The capex surge is driving demand for GPUs, servers, and construction, reshaping supplier order books. (x.com)
The biggest cloud companies are preparing to spend about $650 billion to $700 billion on capital projects in 2026, turning the artificial-intelligence buildout into a full-scale infrastructure race. (cnbc.com) Dell’Oro Group said on February 11 that Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft entered 2026 with combined data-center capital spending near $600 billion. CNBC reported two days earlier that Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft alone were expected to spend close to $700 billion this year. (prnewswire.com) (cnbc.com) The company-by-company numbers are large enough to move markets. Amazon said on February 5 it expects about $200 billion in 2026 capital spending, Alphabet said on February 4 it sees up to $185 billion, Meta said on January 28 it expects $115 billion to $135 billion, and Oracle said on March 10 it still expects $50 billion in fiscal 2026 capital expenditures. (ir.aboutamazon.com) (abc.xyz) (investor.atmeta.com) (sec.gov) This spending is not mostly office buildings or routine maintenance. Alphabet told investors that about 60% of its capital spending in late 2025 went to servers, with the other 40% going to data centers and networking gear, while Amazon said most of its 2026 spending would be for Amazon Web Services. (abc.xyz) (geekwire.com) The immediate target is artificial-intelligence capacity: more graphics processors, more power equipment, more cooling, and more buildings that can hold densely packed server clusters. Dell’Oro said larger AI clusters are lifting demand for networking, storage, inference capacity, and advanced power and cooling systems. (prnewswire.com) That wave is already reshaping supplier order books. Nvidia said in its annual report for the year ended January 25, 2026, that revenue growth was driven by data-center compute and networking platforms, and that Blackwell systems made up the majority of its data-center revenue. (sec.gov) The buildout is also spreading beyond chips into construction and utilities. Amazon says AWS is building data centers with new power, cooling, and hardware designs, and Oracle has tied its higher spending directly to more cloud and AI compute capacity. (aws.amazon.com) (sec.gov) Investors are split on how long the pace can hold. CNBC reported that the four biggest U.S. internet companies generated $200 billion in free cash flow in 2025, down from $237 billion in 2024, and said Amazon could turn negative on free cash flow in 2026 as spending rises. (cnbc.com) The longer-range forecasts are even bigger. Dell’Oro said worldwide data-center capex could approach $1 trillion in 2026 and reach $1.7 trillion by 2030, with accelerated servers for AI training and specialized workloads accounting for about two-thirds of infrastructure spending by then. (prnewswire.com) For now, the clearest signal is coming from the buyers themselves: Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle are committing tens of billions of dollars each before most of the promised AI returns are visible in reported profits. (ir.aboutamazon.com) (abc.xyz) (investor.atmeta.com) (microsoft.com) (sec.gov)
