For the past two years, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta have repeatedly set records for how much they are spending on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the four giants did it again.<\/p>\n
In the first three months of the year, the four companies reported in their financial results, they plowed a total of $130.65 billion into capital expenditures, largely spending on data centers that power A.I. That figure \u2014 which was another record \u2014 was more than three times what the Manhattan Project<\/a> cost to develop nuclear bombs and 71 percent higher than what the tech giants spent in the same quarter a year earlier.<\/p>\n All of the companies said they would be spending even more, totaling roughly $700 billion this year. Meta, for one, raised its spending forecast for 2026 to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from its previous prediction of $115 billion to $135 billion. Google also boosted its projection, to at least $180 billion, and said its spending would be \u201csignificantly\u201d higher next year.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery sign that we\u2019re seeing in our own work and across the industry gives us confidence in this investment,\u201d Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chief executive, said on a call with investors.<\/p>\n The spending showcased how the biggest tech companies are deep into a wildly expensive era of A.I., which many of them see as an unparalleled chance to become far larger. And as the frenzy escalates<\/a>, it\u2019s increasingly only the planet\u2019s wealthiest companies that have the money to lead this race.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta continue to dominate in core businesses that spew cash, such as serving ads on YouTube or Instagram<\/a>, delivering items in a few hours or tallying cells in Excel. The companies generated a combined $431 billion in sales in the quarter and made $151 billion in profit.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can handle it\u201d because of their cash flow, John Blackledge, an analyst with the investment bank TD Cowen, said about the A.I. spending.<\/p>\n For much of last year, Wall Street was jittery about whether the tech spending would bring in enough returns, but some investors have backed away from those fears. That\u2019s partly because of the recent success of Anthropic\u2019s Claude Code, an A.I. tool that lets users quickly generate code without knowing programming and a product that has become a juggernaut. This month, Anthropic said<\/a> its March sales were the equivalent of $30 billion a year, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cThe expectations are getting higher and higher,\u201d said Arjun Bhatia, who covers tech companies for the investment bank William Blair.<\/p>\n The biggest tech companies have also formed deeper partnerships with the leading A.I. labs Anthropic and OpenAI, investing billions in them. In turn, Anthropic and OpenAI have committed to spending hundreds of billions on computing power that the tech giants provide.<\/p>\n Last week, Google and Amazon announced plans to invest up to a combined $65 billion in Anthropic, and they will provide the start-up with at least 10 gigawatts of computing power \u2014 or enough to power more than four million homes.<\/p>\n Google and, increasingly, Amazon have also seen traction developing their own A.I. chips to power the boom. Google has begun selling its chips to Anthropic, and Meta announced a multibillion-dollar deal last week to use some of Amazon\u2019s chips.<\/p>\n No company is spending more than Amazon, which has been racing to build data centers to satisfy demand for computing power. It has focused particularly on building Project Rainier<\/a>, which are massive A.I. data centers for Anthropic.<\/p>\n Amazon spent $43 billion on capital expenditures in the quarter, primarily for data centers. Its cloud computing business \u2014 which decelerated a year ago, before picking up steam more recently \u2014 generated $37.6 billion in sales, up 28 percent from a year earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do view this as truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,\u201d said Andy Jassy, Amazon\u2019s chief executive, adding that the company would \u201cinvest a significant amount of capital over the coming years to pursue that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n Microsoft spent $31.9 billion in the first three months of the year, up 49 percent from a year earlier. It said spending was likely to pick up in the current quarter to more than $40 billion, with total spending in 2026 of about $190 billion. Azure, its core cloud computing offering, and related A.I. services grew about 40 percent, and the company said it could have increased growth further if it had more capacity. It expects to have more demand than available data centers through at least the end of the year.<\/p>\n Satya Nadella, Microsoft\u2019s chief executive, said the company was investing so it could handle increased use as A.I. systems experienced \u201cexponential\u201d improvements.<\/p>\n (The New York Times has sued<\/a> OpenAI and Microsoft, its partner, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit\u2019s claims.)<\/p>\n Google said its spending was $36 billion in the quarter, more than double the $17 billion it spent in the same period last year.<\/p>\n The internet giant has benefited from A.I. in several ways. Its Gemini A.I. system has become the backbone of Google Search, offering quick and complete answers that drive people to make more search queries. As a result, Google can serve more ads that are also more relevant. For the first three months of the year, Google said, sales from search, its largest business, increased 19 percent to $60.4 billion.<\/p>\n A.I. has also helped Google\u2019s cloud business. The company has signed $1 billion deals with new customers and persuaded existing customers to increase their spending. In the most recent quarter, its cloud sales rose 63 percent to $20 billion.<\/p>\n Sundar Pichai, Google\u2019s chief executive, said the company hadn\u2019t been able to build A.I. infrastructure fast enough. \u201cOur cloud revenue would have been higher if we were able to meet that demand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Meta is in some ways an outlier, because its capital spending is for its own use, rather than for cloud computing that it sells to others. As it morphs from a social media company to an A.I. company, Meta is spending amounts similar to Amazon\u2019s and Microsoft\u2019s totals. For the quarter, it spent $19.8 billion, more than half of the $39 billion that it spent for all of 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meta has developed A.I. to increase user engagement and improve advertising on its social platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram. Revenue increased 33 percent to $56.3 billion in the quarter, a sign that the spending was accelerating growth.<\/p>\n