Hyperscalers and tech giants have entered into an AI arms race with about $800 billion in combined capex plans this year toward data centers, AI accelerators, and other AI-related infrastructure.
The sheer size of the spending plans has drawn plenty of attention from industry observers. As one tech CIO noted in a Tegus Expert Insights call, “Hyperscaler spending right now, there's an arms race around AI, for sure. The capital intensity is significant, particularly around data centers and accelerator capacity. I think it's aligned with expected demand, especially expected demand growth for model training and inference workloads.”
AI capex was the main focus for investors this earnings season across the tech industry, as most major tech firms raised their capex projections due to rising cloud compute demand and the subsequent need for more physical AI infrastructure.
Investor sentiment toward higher capex spending was mixed. Companies like Microsoft and Amazon, which tied their capex to actual demand, saw their shares rally. However, companies whose capex guidance jumped sharply without a clear monetization story saw a sell-off in shares. Overall, sentiment across the Magnificent 7’s latest earnings actually rose this quarter, according to the AlphaSense’s sentiment index, which tracks management tone across earnings call transcripts.
Below, discover what the major AI capex spenders had to say in their latest earnings reports, based on findings from AlphaSense.
Alphabet
Alphabet held its latest earnings report on July 22, and it raised 2026 capex to $205 billion from $190 billion, with management attributing the increase to an acceleration in the delivery of data center and compute capacity to meet growing demand. The company is aggressively deploying infrastructure investment to protect its search business while capturing cloud share.
“As we previously shared, we continue to expect our CapEx to increase significantly in 2027 and we'll provide more details at a later date,” Anat Ashkenazi, CFO at Alphabet, said during the earnings call.
Alphabet shares sank the day following earnings due to investor concerns around the high spending plans.
Amazon
Amazon reported its most recent earnings on July 30. Management raised the company’s FY2026 capex guidance to $220 billion from $200 billion due to surging AI demand and rising memory costs.
“But even at that amount, we will still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026. And I believe this dynamic will also be true in 2027 too,” said Andy Jassey, President and CEO at Amazon.com, on the earnings call.
Amazon shares climbed following its report as investors overlooked the company’s high capex plans due to an earnings beat on both the top and bottom lines.
Apple
Apple reported its fiscal 3Q earnings on July 30. Apple’s capex story is unique relative to its peers because it deliberately avoids the massive data center builds seen across major tech firms and instead leans on third-party cloud partnerships. Also, Apple is investing directly in Private Cloud Compute, its cloud AI system. Analysts forecast Apple’s FY2027 capex to reach $11.2 million, or 2.2% of revenue, which looks closer to a chip designer’s capex intensity than a hyperscaler's.
Apple shares tumbled following its report, despite an earnings beat, driven by disappointing revenue guidance and concerns over memory chip cost inflation.
Meta
Meta reported Q2 earnings on July 29. Management raised its annual capex range to $130 billion on the low end (from $125 billion previously) to support its aggressive AI ambitions. The company is focused on maximizing compute capacity through 2026 and into 2027, while prioritizing the development of agentic tools, frontier model training, and improvements to core advertising ranking. Analysts see further monetization levers in 2026 from advertising on Reels, AI services, and business messaging tools.
Meta shares dropped following its report due to a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast and dip in free cash flow from heavy AI infrastructure spending.
Microsoft
Microsoft reported its latest earnings on July 29. The company’s capex hit $41 billion in its fiscal fourth quarter, which is up 70% year-over-year, as it accelerated its data center footprint expansion. However, management revised its calendar year 2026 capex down to about $175 billion from $190 billion. The drop in capex was the result of the company’s accounting change to extend the useful life of data centers from 15 to 25 years, rather than a spending pullback.
Microsoft shares jumped in premarket trading following earnings as the company reported stronger-than-expected revenue guidance and left its spending plans for FY2026 largely unchanged.
Nvidia
Nvidia is set to report earnings on August 26, marking the last of the Magnificent 7’s reports. The company is transitioning from being a primary chip vendor to an ecosystem financier. On August 10, Nvidia announced partnerships with major Wall Street firms to mobilize over $500 billion of third-party capital for the buildout of AI infrastructure.
“NVIDIA has reached an important milestone. We began by building chips; today, we are helping create a new class of productive, investable infrastructure: AI factories,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, in the press release.
The partnerships aim to turn Nvidia compute and full-stack infrastructure into an investable asset class, allowing investors to underwrite the buildout of AI factories.
Oracle
Oracle reported its fiscal Q4 and FY2026 earnings on June 10. Capex for FY2026 was $56 billion, and management guided FY2027 net capex as high as $90–$95 billion. Oracle’s Remaining Performance Obligation (RPO), or the value of contracted but unrealized revenue, jumped to $638 billion, which surpassed analyst estimates. The RPO increase was broad-based, with contributions across the customer base including four customers who signed contracts exceeding $8 billion.
Oracle has been transitioning from a legacy SaaS provider to a major player in AI infrastructure. Its AI capex includes data center construction and expansion, GPU clusters for training and inference, cloud infrastructure capacity, and the power infrastructure needed to support it.
You have a company like Oracle that says, ‘I'm going to meet this moment by diversifying into this hardware story, this AI infrastructure story. I'm going to rent out NVIDIA GPUs, I'm going to rent out NVIDIA hardware, and then I'm going to use my existing data center infrastructure and technology, which Oracle already had by the way, to tell this more compelling business story going forward.’ I think that's why the OCI, the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure stuff, is doing really well, but the SaaS business is still lagging.
Following the earnings report, Oracle shares dropped, largely because of concerns around the company’s spending plans to fund its AI buildout.
Tesla
Tesla reported its earnings on July 22. The company is significantly accelerating its capex as it transitions from a pure-play auto manufacturer into a physical AI and robotics ecosystem provider.
During its earnings call, management reiterated its high-intensity spending guidance of more than $25 billion for FY2026, roughly a threefold increase from the $8.5 billion it spent in FY2025. That spending is designed to fund concurrent ramps across autonomous vehicle fleets, humanoid robotics, in-house semiconductor fabrication, and training compute. Management guided that capex will continue to grow over the next two to three years as new facilities come online.
Investors are divided on the ROI of Tesla’s capex cycle, with some analysts noting management is prioritizing time-to-market over capital efficiency, which is a trade-off executives view as having a higher net present value outcome.
However, not all investors are convinced: Tesla shares fell following the report due to an earnings miss and concerns over the high capex.
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