Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta plan $700 billion AI infrastructure spend by 2026
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Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta project $700 billion in AI data center and infrastructure spending for 2025, rising to $715 billion in 2026. This accelerates from $67 billion in 2018 and $228 billion in 2024. Amazon plans over $300 billion in capital expenditure, including more than $13 billion to Anthropic. Outlays surpass inflation-adjusted U.S. interstate highway system costs of $630 billion.
AI 1000 · 12 actions
- POSTGM#143@GARYMARCUSSheer insanity. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta collectively are spending more money than the Manhattan Project *every single month*. More than 12x the Manhattan Project every year. And what they have got to show for it? None are making major profits on AI; none has a technical moat; a massive price war is inevitable. And few of their customers are seeing major returns on investment. Greatest capital misallocation in history.
- POSTSI#530@SIGNULLLmsft, goog, meta, & amazon are on track to spend ~$700b on ai infrastructure in 2026. this kinda spending usually happens via govts or wars whereas this time, it’s four companies racing to build the foundational mechanics of agi. kinda insane that the next layer of civilization is being ~entirely privately financed before most govts even understand what’s being built. has this ever happened before?!
- QUOTESI#530@SIGNULLL@SIGNULLLmonopoly was my favorite board game as a kid, & most ppl drastically misunderstand the game, esp inexperienced ones. you see, everyone fixates on the color sets like boardwalk, park place, aka the glamorous properties you can load up with houses & hotels. but the real asset class is railroads. esp because railroads don’t look valuable psychologically. they’re not color coded. they’re not grouped together. they don’t sit in a satisfying little row. so people undervalue them. you can even trade entire color cards for railroads & it would make sense. railroads sit on every side of the board, which means they tax movement itself. you’re not betting on one neighborhood. you’re placing toll booths across the entire map. they also require zero capex after purchase. no houses. no hotels. no incremental spend. just buy them, consolidate them, & let the board do the work. once you own all four, every railroad hit becomes painful, especially early in the game when liquidity is scarce. the rent is pure pressure. it bleeds other players while preserving your own capital. the trick to monopoly isn’t owning the fanciest property. it’s owning the infrastructure everyone has to pass through. whenever you build business models, you should think about how they act as a *tax* as opposed a one time purchase, or even a several time purchase. e.g. amazon is a tax on commerce, meta is a tax on social, google is a tax on information, microsoft is a tax on productivity, & apple is a tax on status.
- REPOSTNS#289@NOAHPINION@JOSEPHPOLITANOUS spending on data centers & computers has grown so much that it's larger than basically all other physical investment categories—more than all single-family housing construction, factories, power plants, industrial equipment, apartments I'm running out of points of comparison https://x.com/JosephPolitano/status/2049851668674593236/photo/1 https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/2049833460332736574
