The Digester
Week 7, Wednesday

Big Tech pours $630 billion into AI infrastructure, matching Sweden’s GDP

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft raised capex for 2026 to scale AI compute through massive data center builds, triggering investor unease and a broad tech selloff.

  • Combined capex projections now top $630 billion after Alphabet said nearly $185 billion, Amazon $200 billion, and Meta up to $135 billion.
  • Spending is heavily concentrated on AI compute hardware and infrastructure such as data centers, servers, and power systems.
  • The scale of the build-out is comparable to the annual GDP of countries like Sweden and Israel.
  • Analysts say the main bottleneck has shifted from chips to energy and physical data center capacity.
  • Investors reacted with a weeklong selloff that wiped nearly $1 trillion from software and services and crypto as shareholders worry about cash burn and uncertain short term returns

Sources

fortune.com