Alphabet, Meta and Amazon poured $380 billion into AI — but not everyone is winning from the spend

The big tech giants (Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon) have made it through earnings season and sent a unified message to Wall Street: AI investments are growing and will grow even more in the near future.

These four tech giants have lifted their guidance on capital spending and now collectively predict that figure will exceed $380 billion this year as they race to build infrastructure for “nearly unlimited demand” for AI services.

Sky-high spending forecasts and bubble concerns

The magnitude of these expenditure estimates is remarkable; It even dwarfs OpenAI, which recently announced infrastructure deals worth nearly $1 trillion with partners like Nvidia, Oracle and Broadcom.

But the increased level of spending has raised doubts among some observers, who have expressed concern that these figures are fueling a bubble. The news channel also questions whether there is enough energy and resources to make the great promises of artificial intelligence a reality. CNBC reported.

How did companies spend this earnings season?

Investors’ reactions following the announcements were mixed; Amazon saw its stock rise after it beat earnings and revenue estimates and raised its capital spending forecast to about $125 billion this year from a previous estimate of $118 billion.

Alphabet, which owns Google, also received praise from investors, reported higher earnings and raised its capital spending forecast for this year to $91 billion to $93 billion from $75 billion previously to $85 billion, sending shares up 2.5 percent on Thursday.

However, not all companies had the same fate. Microsoft shares fell nearly 3%, despite revenue beating estimates, largely after CFO Amy Hood said in its earnings call that capital spending growth would accelerate in fiscal 2026, pointing to major spending ahead of forecasts this year.

Shares of Meta fell 11% on Thursday, the steepest decline in three years, despite strong results overall. The company narrowed its capital expenditure forecast to between $70 billion and $72 billion, from the previous range of $66 billion to $72 billion. CNBC reported.

What do different market reactions mean?

The different market reactions to the shares of the four major technology companies underscore an important divergence. The artificial intelligence investments made by Amazon, Microsoft and Google will directly strengthen their cloud infrastructure businesses.

However, Meta does not have a cloud service and does not have a clear revenue story tied to artificial intelligence investments. The company said the benefits it gained from AI were driven by improved performance in its core digital advertising business.

Even after the announcement, analysts at Oppenheimer kept a buy rating on Meta stock, citing an “unknown revenue opportunity” in what the company calls superintelligence and saying investors will struggle with “aggressive revenue growth offset by higher expenses.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in June that the company would launch Super Intelligence Labs, led by some of Meta’s high-profile costly hires, including former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

Cantor analysts noted that cloud providers with “large service stacks like Microsoft” are in a better position to leverage existing AI infrastructure but expressed concerns about seemingly endless spending projections.