Big Tech’s 2026 AI capex tops $700 billion, up 44% year over year

Five hyperscale cloud providers are set to spend more than $700 billion on AI-related capital expenditures in 2026, a 44% increase from a year earlier, mainly on GPUs, custom AI chips, data centers, and supporting power and networking infrastructure. The totals are based on company financial disclosures and analyst compilations, pointing to a rapid acceleration in AI infrastructure investment. While the figures do not single out Nvidia, AMD, or Broadcom, the surge implies rising demand for core AI compute hardware as buildouts scale.