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If Wednesday’s tech earnings calls had a theme, it was this: AI spending is the new flex.
Microsoft, Google, and Meta didn’t just show off record profits. They announced they’re about to spend even more building the digital cathedrals that will house their AI ambitions.
Investors hoping for a chill quarter? Sorry. The AI money bonfire has only just begun.
At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg is apparently building a future where servers hum louder than your aunt’s Facebook notifications.
The company now expects to spend up to $72 billion this year, and CFO Susan Li says next year’s bill will be “notably larger.” (Via: Wired)
Meta’s AI recruiting spree has gotten so wild that some researchers are reportedly walking away with hundred-million-dollar pay packages.
Zuck insists the spending will prep Meta for the coming “superintelligence” era, basically, he’s stockpiling GPUs for Judgment Day.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is thinking even bigger. It now plans to blow $91 to $93 billion on capital expenses next year, up from a mere $75 billion earlier in 2025.
Most of that will go into data centers and AI projects, because apparently, the internet isn’t big enough yet.
But it’s paying off: Alphabet’s quarterly revenue hit a record $102.3 billion, up 33 percent year-over-year.
Its Gemini AI app now has 650 million users, growing faster than your unread Gmail count.
Then there’s Microsoft, whose cloud empire keeps getting, well, cloudier.
The company spent nearly $35 billion last quarter alone, a 74 percent jump from last year, to feed the AI beast powering its partnership with OpenAI.
CEO Satya Nadella insists it’s all about building “fungible” data centers (read: plug-and-play AI factories) that can be endlessly upgraded as Nvidia keeps dropping new GPUs like iPhones.
Of course, some analysts are whispering bubble, as Big Tech races to outspend itself.
Nvidia is pledging $100 billion for AI data centers. OpenAI says it’s planning a jaw-dropping $1.4 trillion in computing resources.
If this really is a bubble, at least it’ll burst in 4K, rendered beautifully, by AI.
