Big tech has spent $155bn on AI this year

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Big tech has spent $155bn on AI this year

In just the first half of 2025, companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple have spent more than $155 billion building out their AI infrastructure. That’s more than the entire U.S. federal budget for education, job training, and social services combined.

Microsoft alone committed over $30 billion last quarter and is expected to spend close to $100 billion this year. Alphabet has already crossed $40 billion and is pacing toward $85 billion. Meta has doubled its spending from last year, putting $30.7 billion into AI so far, and says it will hit $66 to $72 billion in total. Amazon is racing ahead too, with $55.7 billion already spent, and expectations to blow past $100 billion by year-end. Even Apple, historically more discreet, has ramped up its investments, with quarterly capital spending up nearly 70% year-over-year and large internal shifts toward AI hiring and infrastructure.

These are not just big bets. They are strategic declarations that AI will underpin the next decade of products, from search and productivity to cloud and consumer devices. This spending surge is also a land grab. These companies aren’t just building AI tools; they’re laying claim to the compute power, chips, and data centers that the future of the internet will depend on. Investors, for now, love it. Microsoft has hit a $4 trillion market cap. Meta is closing in on $2 trillion. Nvidia, which sells the GPUs powering most of this revolution, briefly passed $4 trillion itself. But underneath the optimism, some analysts are sounding cautious notes. Capital expenditures this massive can squeeze cash flow. There are echoes of the dot-com bubble, where companies spent heavily without guaranteed returns. These giants are profitable, and their AI arms are already driving real growth. Still, there are risks. The environmental cost of AI infrastructure is becoming harder to ignore. Data centers are energy-hungry, water-intensive, and already facing scrutiny from regulators and climate advocates. And as spending concentrates among just a handful of players, it raises broader concerns about competition and accessibility in the AI economy.