Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta have repeatedly recorded how much they spend on artificial intelligence over the past two years.
On Wednesday, the four giants did it again.
In the first three months of the year, the four companies reported a total of $130.65 billion in capital spending in their financial results, mostly spending on AI-powered data centers. That number — another record — was more than three times the cost of the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear bombs and 71 percent more than what the tech giants spent in the same quarter a year earlier.
All companies said they will spend even more this year, totaling roughly $700 billion. Meta, for example, raised its 2026 spending forecast to $125 billion to $145 billion, up from a previous forecast of $115 billion to $135 billion. Google also raised its projection to at least $180 billion and said its spending will be “significantly” higher next year.
“Every sign we see in our own work and across the industry gives us confidence in this investment,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said in a call with investors.
The spending showed how the biggest tech companies are deep into the wildly expensive era of artificial intelligence, which many see as a unique chance to become much bigger. And as the madness intensifies, increasingly only the richest companies on the planet have the money to lead the race.
That’s because Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta continue to dominate key cash-spinning businesses like serving ads on YouTube or Instagram, delivering items in hours, or adding cells in Excel. The companies generated combined revenue of $431 billion in the quarter and posted a profit of $151 billion.
John Blackledge, an analyst at investment bank TD Cowen, said of AI spending, “They can handle it” because of their cash flow.
For much of last year, Wall Street was nervous about whether tech spending would generate enough returns, but some investors shrugged off those concerns. This is partly due to the recent success of Anthropic’s Claude Code, an AI tool that allows users to quickly generate code without programming knowledge, and the product has become a juggernaut. This month, Anthropic he said its March sales were the equivalent of $30 billion a year, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025.
“Expectations are getting higher and higher,” said Arjun Bhatia, who covers technology companies for investment bank William Blair.
The biggest tech companies have also forged deeper partnerships with leading AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI, investing billions in them. In turn, Anthropic and OpenAI have pledged to spend hundreds of billions on the computing power the tech giants provide.
Last week, Google and Amazon announced plans to invest up to $65 billion in Anthropic together, and will provide the startup with at least 10 gigawatts of computing power — enough to power more than four million homes.
Google and, increasingly, Amazon have also seen a push to develop their own AI chips, fueling the boom. Google has begun selling its chips to Anthropic, and last week Meta announced a multibillion-dollar deal to use some of Amazon’s chips.
No company is spending more than Amazon, which has raced to build data centers to meet the demand for computing power. She particularly focused on building Project Rainier, massive AI data centers for Anthropic.
Amazon spent $43 billion on capital expenditures in the quarter, mostly on data centers. Its cloud computing business — which slowed a year ago before picking up recently — generated $37.6 billion in revenue, up 28 percent from a year earlier.
“We see this as a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, adding that the company is “investing a significant amount of capital over the coming years to seize this opportunity.”
Microsoft spent $31.9 billion in the first three months of the year, which is 49 percent more than a year earlier. It said spending is likely to rise to more than $40 billion this quarter, with total spending in 2026 about $190 billion. Azure, its core cloud computing offering and related AI services, grew by 40 percent, and the company said it could increase growth further if it had more capacity. It expects to have more demand than available data centers by at least the end of the year.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said the company was investing to handle increased usage as AI systems experienced “exponential” improvements.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, its partner, for copyright infringement on news content related to AI systems. Both companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
Google said its spending was $36 billion in the quarter, more than double the $17 billion it spent in the same period last year.
The internet giant has benefited from artificial intelligence in several ways. Its Gemini AI system has become the backbone of Google Search, offering fast and complete answers that compel people to enter more search queries. This allows Google to show more ads that are also more relevant. In the first three months of the year, revenue from search, its biggest business, rose 19 percent to $60.4 billion.
AI has also helped Google’s cloud business. The company signed $1 billion worth of contracts with new customers and convinced existing customers to increase their spending. In the most recent quarter, its cloud revenue rose 63 percent to $20 billion.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said that the company was not able to build the AI infrastructure fast enough. “Our cloud revenue would be higher if we were able to meet that demand,” he said.
Meta is an outlier in some respects because its capital expenditures are for its own use, rather than for cloud computing that it sells to others. As Meta transforms from a social media company to an AI company, it’s spending similar amounts to Amazon and Microsoft combined. It spent $19.8 billion in the quarter, more than half The $39 billion it spent in the entire year 2024.
Meta developed AI to increase user engagement and improve advertising on its social platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram. Revenue rose 33 percent to $56.3 billion in the quarter, a sign that spending was accelerating growth.
Last week, Meta said it would lay off 10 percent of its workforce, or about 8,000 people, as it spends on AI. In a call with investors on Wednesday, Mr Zuckerberg addressed concerns about how artificial intelligence could replace people in jobs, saying: “People will be more important in the future, not less.”
Some of the tech companies have justified their building spree by saying they can’t meet all the demand. But analysts said there were risks if the companies became too dependent on two young customers: OpenAI and Anthropic.
More than 40 percent of Microsoft’s $625 billion cloud contract backlog comes from OpenAI, for example, the company said in January. This week, Microsoft and OpenAI announced new terms that loosened their ties.
Betting that much on OpenAI and Anthropic is a gamble. But even if the startups flop, the tech giants are likely to weather the losses because of their size, scale and other businesses, said Matt Stucky, who manages technology investments for Northwestern Mutual.
“The main business,” he said, “is good.”
Tripp Mickle and Eli Tan contributed reporting from San Francisco and Natallie Rocha from New York.
