on april 30, local time, the financial times of the united kingdom compiled first-quarter earnings reports from tech giants, revealing that google, amazon, microsoft, and meta plan to collectively invest $725 billion in capital expenditures in 2026—a substantial 77% increase from last year’s record $410 billion. all four companies are accelerating their deployment of ai infrastructure, with google standing out in particular: its cloud revenue surged 63% year over year to $20 billion.
microsoft has set its 2026 fiscal-year capital expenditure at $190 billion, significantly higher than analysts’ average forecast of $152 billion. microsoft chief financial officer amy hood disclosed that $25 billion of this figure is attributable to price hikes in storage chips and components. she acknowledged that, even with increased spending, microsoft will remain constrained by capacity at least through 2026, as the company speeds up the rollout of gpu, cpu, and storage infrastructure. meanwhile, meta has raised its full-year capital-expenditure guidance to a cap of $145 billion, citing similar factors: rising prices for storage chips, as well as intensifying competition for land, electricity, and skilled labor needed for data-center construction. the company’s first-quarter revenue grew 33% year over year to $56.3 billion.
alphabet delivered a stellar performance: revenue reached $110 billion, and net profit soared 81% year over year to $62.6 billion. google cloud posted quarterly revenue of $20 billion, outpacing the growth of amazon web services and microsoft azure in the cloud business. the latter two recorded related revenues of $37.6 billion and $34.7 billion, respectively. google cloud’s backlog of committed contracts now stands at $460 billion—roughly double the level at the end of last year. alphabet has also raised its capital-expenditure guidance to a maximum of $190 billion, matching microsoft’s level. following the earnings release, alphabet’s after-hours stock price climbed 7%, putting its market value on track to hit a new high of $4.3 trillion. jefferies analysts bluntly stated that the ai economy is healthy and that recent revenue growth is sufficient to support these massive investments; bearish views, they said, are simply junk. meta ceo mark zuckerberg, however, noted that while many are developing various types of ai agents, only a handful truly give him the confidence to let his mother use them.
