The largest US companies spent $155 billion in the competition in 2025, spending more money on each other and $155 billion, locked in the competition in 2025 to luxurp $155 billion into the development of artificial intelligence than the US government spent on education, training, employment and social services in the 2025 fiscal year.
Based on the latest financial disclosures from Silicon Valley's biggest players, the race is about to accelerate to hundreds of millions of people in a year.
Over the past two weeks, Alphabet, a parent of Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Google, has shared quarterly public financial reports. Each revealed that the figures that refer to the money a company spends on capital expenditures, or acquisition or upgrades of tangible assets around 2018 are already in the total of tens of thousands.
CAPEX is abbreviated for technology companies' spending on AI, and technology requires huge investments in physical infrastructure, namely data centers that require large amounts of electricity, water and expensive semiconductor chips. In its latest revenue call, Google said capital expenditures “support AI by reflecting primarily investments in servers and data centers.”
Meta's capital expenditures since the start of the year reached $30.7 billion, doubling the $15.2 billion figure since last year, according to the revenue report. In the most recent quarter alone, the company spent $17 billion on capital expenditures, doubled by $8.5 billion for the same period in 2024. Alphabet has reported about $400 billion in CAPEX so far in the first two quarters of this fiscal year, and Amazon has reported $55.7 billion. Microsoft said it will spend more than $300 billion this quarter to build a data center that powers AI services. Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said CAPEX this quarter was at least 50% higher than spending in the same period last year, and greater than the company's record capital expenditure of $24.2 billion from June to June.
“We will continue to oppose the vast opportunities ahead,” Hood said.
Next year, Big Tech's total capital expenditure is expected to rise significantly, surpassing the already spectacular amount of the previous year. Microsoft is planning to unload around $100 billion in AI in the next fiscal year, CEO Satya Nadella said Wednesday. Meta is expected to spend between $660 billion and $720 billion. Alphabet is expected to spend $85 billion, significantly higher than its previous $750 billion estimate. Amazon estimated that spending in 2025 would be $100 million as it would steal money from Amazon's web services. Analysts now expect it to reach $118 billion. In total, four tech companies will spend more than $400 million on Capex next year, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The billion-dollar figure represents mammoth investments, which is greater than the European Union's quarterly defence spending, as the Journal points out. However, the tech giant doesn't seem to be able to spend enough money on investors. Microsoft, Google and Meta notified Wall Street analysts last quarter that they said they were higher than previous estimates. In all three companies, investors were excited, and each company's stocks skyrocketed after the call of their respective incomes. Microsoft's market capitalization reached $40 the day after the report.
Even the tech giant's most attractive Apple suggests that it will significantly increase its spending on AI next year. The company's quarterly equipment rose to $3.46 billion from $2.15 billion in the same period last year. The iPhone maker reported revenue from the blockbuster on Thursday, reporting rebound iPhone sales and business exceeding expectations in China, but is considered to be the most behind in developing and deploying high-tech Giants AI products.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that the company is relocating a “fair number” of employees to focus on artificial intelligence, and the “center of its AI strategy” is to increase investment in all devices and platforms and “embed” AI. However, they declined to disclose exactly how much Apple is spending.
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“We're expanding our investments significantly. We don't have certain numbers behind it,” he said.
Smaller players are trying to catch up with the massive spending of the incumbent and take advantage of the gold rush. At the end of the week of revenue, Openai announced it had raised $8.3 billion in investments, part of its planned $40 billion funding, and evaluated the startup that ChatGpt Chatbot kicked at $300 million in 2022.
