Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle account for the vast majority of US AI infrastructure spending, and an NBER paper revised in October 2026, tracking their SEC filings and earnings releases, found the five firms' combined capital expenditure has surged from $159 billion in 2022 to a forecast $784 billion in 2026
The 2022 and 2024 totals, $159 billion and $242 billion, come from the five firms' SEC filings. The 2026 figure combines management forecasts for Amazon, Alphabet and Meta with year-to-date spending plus an extrapolation for Microsoft and Oracle.
Verified 2026-10-24
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Five companies' spending plans now set much of the demand for AI chips, data centres and the power to run them.
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- While Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Oracle have all sharply increased AI capital spending, Apple's cash paid for property, plant and equipment in the nine months to 27 June 2026 actually fell, to Apple's nine-month capex of $6.8 billion, down 28% from $9.47 billion a year earlier
- A Brookings Papers draft by Columbia's Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh projects that the US AI build-out of 2025 to 2032 will absorb, every year, 3.63% of GDP, versus 2.24% for the railroads of 1870–1890
- Global private investment in AI reached $344.7 billion in 2025, up 127.5% year-over-year, with generative AI companies alone capturing $170.9 billion of that total
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