Amazon leads big tech in 2026 capital expenditure projections

On Thursday, Amazon announced during its earnings report that it projects $200 billion in capital expenditures (capex)—the funds used by a company to acquire, upgrade, and maintain physical assets—throughout 2026. This projection represents a substantial increase from the $131.8 billion the company spent on capex in 2025. According to Amazon, the projected budget will cover “AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.” While some of this spending is dedicated to Amazon’s physical logistics network and robotics rather than purely artificial intelligence, the scale of the projection highlights a massive, industry-wide infrastructure race.

Other technology giants are projecting similarly historic spending increases to build out their data centers and secure compute, or computing power. A comparison of the projected 2026 capex across the sector shows:

• Amazon: Projects $200 billion, up from $131.8 billion in 2025.
• Google: Projected between $175 billion and $185 billion during its Wednesday earnings report, a significant increase from the $91.4 billion spent in 2025.
• Microsoft: Has not issued an official 2026 projection, but its recent quarterly capex of $37.5 billion pencils out to roughly $150 billion annually, assuming it keeps up.
• Meta: Projected between $115 billion and $135 billion in its earnings report last week.
• Oracle: Projects $50 billion for 2026.

The industry logic driving these budgets is that AI will make high-end compute the scarcest resource of the future, meaning only companies that control their own infrastructure will survive. However, investors are showing deep skepticism toward the high capital expenditures being committed. This skepticism has triggered stock price drops across the sector, affecting even companies with robust cloud businesses and clear monetization strategies. The rising costs have already led to investor pressure on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, signaling that the hundreds of billions of dollars committed to infrastructure are testing the limits of investor patience.

Why it matters

The massive capital expenditure race for AI infrastructure is creating a disconnect between tech giants’ long-term strategic bets and immediate investor concerns over profitability. While tech executives view securing compute as a survival-level necessity, Wall Street is increasingly skeptical of the near-term returns on these historic investments.