US Big Tech Ratchets Up AI Spending Past $700 Billion This Year

The biggest US tech firms now plan to spend as much as $725 billion this year on capital expenditures, primarily on AI data center equipment.

Alphabet Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. both raised their full-year guidance for capex, while Microsoft Corp. gave its first estimate for spending through the end of December, matching Alphabet at $190 billion. Amazon.com Inc. was alone among the big four data center developers — which have come to be referred to as the industry’s hyperscalers — to keep its figures unchanged, at $200 billion, though it reported a surge in spending in the March quarter that whittled down its free cash flow.