Big Tech companies have boosted their capital spending by 50 per cent to more than $100bn this year, as they race to build the infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence, despite growing scepticism from Wall Street about the returns on the unprecedented investment.
Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta all revealed massive increases in spending in the first six months of 2024 — totalling $106bn — in their latest quarterly earnings reports, as their leaders brushed off stock market jitters to pledge further investment hikes over the next 18 months.
“At this point, I’d rather risk building capacity before it is needed, rather than too late,” Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said this week, as he predicted the Facebook parent’s capital spending could hit $40bn this year.