Big Tech to Spend $650 Billion This Year as AI Race Intensifies

Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that will reach about $650 billion in 2026 — a mind-boggling tide of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear housed within them.

The spending planned by Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp., all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for AI tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-water mark for capital ...