Big Tech’s AI spending spree is going strong. Here’s how big it could be this year


Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wearing Orion augmented reality glasses during Meta Connect in Menlo Park, California on September 25, 2024. - Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg (Getty Images)
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wearing Orion augmented reality glasses during Meta Connect in Menlo Park, California on September 25, 2024. – Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg (Getty Images)

Last year’s multi-billion dollar spending spree on artificial intelligence isn’t slowing down for Big Tech.

According to the leaders of Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN), the companies could spend a combined $320 billion on AI development and infrastructure this year.

Despite concerns over big spending after Chinese AI startup DeepSeek demonstrated competitive AI models for seemingly billions of dollars less, some Big Tech companies are still preparing to spend tens of billions of dollars each on AI chips and building out AI data centers. Additionally, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon each signed separate nuclear energy agreements late last year in anticipation of the massive energy demands of their AI plans.

Here’s how much Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon expect to spend on AI in 2025.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, 2024 in Washington, D.C. - Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images)
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, 2024 in Washington, D.C. – Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images)

In January, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company is planning to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion in capital expenditures on AI this year.

To meet power demands, Zuckerberg said Meta is building a data center with a capacity of more than two gigawatts — a site that could cover a large part of Manhattan. He also said the company plans to “significantly” grow its AI teams, and has “the capital to continue investing in the years ahead.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at CES 2024 on January 9, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. - Photo: Ethan Miller (Getty Images)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at CES 2024 on January 9, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. – Photo: Ethan Miller (Getty Images)

In a blog post for the New Year, Microsoft said it is on track to invest $80 billion in AI-enabled data centers in fiscal year 2025, which ends on June 30.

The data centers will be used for training and deploying AI models and cloud-based applications, and more than half of the investment will be focused in the U.S., Microsoft President Brad Smith said.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaking at the Stanford Business, Government, and Society Forum at Stanford University on April 3, 2024 in Stanford, California. - Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaking at the Stanford Business, Government, and Society Forum at Stanford University on April 3, 2024 in Stanford, California. – Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)

Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said Google’s AI leadership makes it “confident about the opportunities ahead,” and that the company expects to invest $75 billion in capital expenditures this year “to accelerate our progress,” in a statement about the company’s fourth quarter results.

“Our results show the power of our differentiated full-stack approach to AI innovation and the continued strength of our core businesses,” Pichai said in February. The fourth quarter was “driven by” leadership in AI, Pichai said, including the AI Overviews feature in Google Search.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy at AWS re:Invent 2024 on December 3, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. - Photo: Noah Berger (Getty Images)
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy at AWS re:Invent 2024 on December 3, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. – Photo: Noah Berger (Getty Images)

On Amazon’s fourth quarter earnings call in February, the company said it expects to invest $100 billion in capital expenditures in 2025.

Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy said the company spent $26.3 billion in capital expenditures in the fourth quarter — a “vast majority” of which was on AI for Amazon Web Services. Jassy said the spend “is reasonably representative of what you could expect in annualized capex rate in 2025.”

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