Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are about to spend a shocking amount of money to dominate the AI era

The artificial intelligence spending for Big Tech has only just begun.

The news: Goldman Sachs strategist Amanda Lynam has put some fresh numbers on hyperscaler capex spending on AI, and it’s eye-popping.

Goldman now expects a combined $5.3 trillion of capex spending for the four largest hyperscalers — Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Alphabet (GOOGL) — from fiscal year 2025 to fiscal year 2030. Prior to the start of first quarter earnings, this figure stood at $4.5 trillion.

The baseline aggregate capex estimate stands at $7.6 trillion between 2026 and 2031, across compute, data centers, and power.

The analysis: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta alone collectively plan to allocate $725 billion to capital expenditures in 2026 — up a staggering 77% from last year’s already record-breaking $410 billion.

Amazon is projecting $200 billion in capital expenditures, Alphabet is targeting $175 billion to $185 billion, Meta is guiding $115 billion to $135 billion, and Microsoft is tracking toward $190 billion for the calendar year.

Representative Jake Ellzey, a Republican from Texas, James Danly, US deputy secretary of energy, Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., and Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data center energy at Google, left to right, during a media event at the Google Midlothian Data Center in Midlothian, Texas, US, on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. (Jonathan Johnson/Bloomberg via Getty Images) — Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc., and Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data center energy at Google speak with Texas politicians during a media event at the Google Midlothian Data Center in Midlothian, Texas, US, on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. (Jonathan Johnson/Bloomberg via Getty Images) · Bloomberg

The five main hyperscalers (the other one is Oracle (ORCL) have plans to add roughly $2 trillion in AI-related assets to their balance sheets by 2030.

“Infrastructure spending is cool again,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid. The networking giant has seen a large uptick in AI-related orders, in part due to spending by the hyperscalers.

The bottom line: Hopefully, for all four of these companies, these investments pay off in accelerated top- and bottom-line growth rates. There is no wiggle room here; investors demand strong returns in the future if profits are going to be somewhat constrained today while the hyperscalers build data centers in Podunk.

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance’s editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.

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