The AI capex race is quickly becoming one of the most expensive competitions in tech history—and Amazon and Google are currently leading the pack.
Across Big Tech, the prevailing belief is simple: whoever spends the most on data centers and compute today will dominate artificial intelligence tomorrow. More compute means better models, better products, and long-term competitive advantage. While that logic has its limits, it has proven powerful enough to push capital expenditures to historic levels.
If raw spending is the scoreboard, Amazon appears to be winning the AI capex race—at least for now.
Amazon’s $200 Billion Bet on the Future
In its latest earnings report, Amazon revealed plans to invest $200 billion in capital expenditures throughout 2026, spanning AI infrastructure, custom chips, robotics, and low Earth orbit satellites. That’s a sharp increase from the $131.8 billion the company spent in 2025.
While it’s tempting to attribute the entire budget to AI, Amazon’s scale complicates the picture. Unlike many rivals, the company operates massive physical infrastructure, including warehouses increasingly outfitted with advanced robotics. Still, AI remains a central driver of this unprecedented spending push.
In the context of the AI capex race, Amazon’s willingness to outspend nearly everyone else sends a clear message: it intends to control as much future compute supply as possible.
Google Isn’t Far Behind
Close on Amazon’s heels is Google, which projected $175 billion to $185 billion in capex for 2026, up dramatically from $91.4 billion the year before.
That leap represents one of the most aggressive year-over-year increases in the AI capex race and places Google well ahead of most competitors. The spending reflects the company’s push to scale AI models, expand cloud infrastructure, and reinforce its position across search, enterprise AI, and consumer products.
How the Rest of Big Tech Stacks Up
Other major players are spending heavily—but not quite at the same level.
Meta has guided for $115 billion to $135 billion in capex for 2026, while Oracle projects a comparatively modest $50 billion.
Microsoft hasn’t issued a formal 2026 forecast, but its most recent quarterly capex of $37.5 billion annualizes to roughly $150 billion. That figure places Microsoft firmly in third place in the AI capex race, despite mounting investor pressure on CEO Satya Nadella to rein in spending.
Why Investors Are Nervous
From inside the tech industry, the justification is straightforward. AI is expected to make high-end compute one of the scarcest and most valuable resources of the next decade. Companies that control their own infrastructure won’t just compete—they’ll survive.
Wall Street, however, isn’t fully buying in.
Each of the major tech firms involved in the AI capex race has seen its stock price drop following earnings, as investors reacted to the sheer scale of spending commitments. Notably, companies with the largest projected capex often saw the steepest declines.
And this skepticism isn’t limited to firms still figuring out their AI monetization strategies. Even cloud-heavyweights like Amazon and Microsoft—companies with clear revenue models—are facing pushback. Simply put, the numbers are so large they’re testing investor patience.
The Prize Is Still Unclear
Investor sentiment alone is unlikely to slow the AI capex race. If AI truly reshapes the global economy, pulling back now could be far more costly than overspending in the short term.
But going forward, Big Tech faces a delicate balancing act. Companies must keep building for an AI-driven future while simultaneously reassuring markets that their ambitions won’t permanently crush margins.
For now, Amazon and Google are spending like the prize is everything. The only unanswered question is whether the payoff will justify the cost.
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