Analysis: Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon's capex combined hit a record $130B in Q1, and it is set to reach $725B in 2026, up 77% from $410B in 2025

Meta stock drops on capex increase while Alphabet's cloud business grows faster than rivals Amazon and Microsoft

Financial Times 2026-04-30

Discussion

@justinhendrix Justin Hendrix on bluesky
“Google outshone its rivals in first-quarter earnings with faster cloud growth as the search giant and its Big Tech peers upped their AI infrastructure spending plans again to $725bn this year.”
@mgsiegler M.G. Siegler on x
Not all CapEx is created equal... [image]
@chriscamillo Chris Camillo on x
Today's tech earnings are meaningless. An F5 AI tornado is about to touch down and investors are fixated on next quarter guidance, margin noise, and CapEx timing
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
Updated 2026 capex after today's earning calls: ΜΕΤΑ $145 billion Google $190 billion META's largest cost line increase was R&D, up 46% to almost $18 billion. Everyone is going big.
@adamscochran Adam Cochran on x
Market not a fan of the capex and forward looking projections of the Magnificent 7 stocks. A good chunk of those forward looking earnings tie back to the assumption that OpenAI manages to make its $1.5T in spend commitments next year. Or that AI demand continues to expand with
@divestech Dan Ives on x
Solid cloud numbers from hyperscalers. Across the board and huge piece of AI puzzle. Positive for big tech and AI winners. Conf calls will be key around guide and Capex especially for Meta. Comeback Azure growth q for Redmond..very important for MSFT 🔥🐂
@dee_bosa Deirdre Bosa on x
Amazon's free cash cushion is almost gone. FCF is down 95% [image]
@firstadopter Tae Kim on x
NVIDIA BEARS: PEAK CAPEX IS GONNA BE NEXT NEXT YEAR, OK?
@hedgeyecomm @hedgeyecomm on x
$META capex increase on component pricing versus data center capacity... are you paying attention?
@garyblack00 Gary Black on x
In today's earnings extravaganza, $META 1Q Rev beat and gave in line guidance but raised its 2026 CapEx forecast (-6% post-mkt); $MSFT Revs beat but absent guidance until the call was -2% post market; $GOOG beat on a one-time securities gain and stronger than expected cloud
@ecommerceshares @ecommerceshares on x
The $GOOG numbers were absolutely MIND-BLOWING. Revenue +22%. Cloud +63% (WTF???) up from +48% in Q4, with record margin at 33% despite huge capex. Search accelerated yet again to +19%. The opposite of dead! Total Op margin at 36.1% (+200bps) = staying lean! Just STUNNING. 🤯 [ima…
@apompliano Anthony Pompliano on x
Hyperscaler CAPEX went from $80 billion to a projected $660 billion in six years. This growth is insane. READ: https://www.procapinsights.com/ ... [image]
@vijayshekhar Vijay Shekhar Sharma on x
Only two companies — Google and Facebook will spend more than $300 Billion in capex this year !! Let that sink in. 🏭🏗️ Masa wasn't understood well, when he suggested a Trillion $ of AI 🤖 infra investment two years back. [image]
@quinnypig Corey Quinn on x
Huh. Amazon's free cash flow has collapsed by 95%, because basically every dollar in the door goes back out as concrete, GPUs, and substations. CapEX went up $59.3B. Net income was $30.3B. $16.8B of that is a pre-tax paper gain from marking up their Anthropic stake
@firstadopter Tae Kim on x
Alphabet: “We expect our 2027 capex to significantly increase compared to 2026” $GOOGL SIGNIFICANTLY BOYS AND GIRLS
@edzitron Ed Zitron on x
Amazon has spent over $240bn on capex in the last 3 years
@jukan05 Jukan on x
Fun fact: the combined capex of the four major U.S. hyperscalers has now surpassed $700 billion. That's an increase of $300 billion year-over-year, or roughly 70% growth.
@edzitron Ed Zitron on x
This is really bad. Amazon spent $52bn (normalized for inflation) in capex between 2002 and 2017 to create one of the single-most profitable businesses in the world. Now it's spending $300bn+ with 75%+ of that revenue coming from Anthropic, who it's fed $13bn+ to keep alive.
@edzitron Ed Zitron on x
Satya Nadella has sunk over $300bn in capex and $13bn+ in equity investments into AI and all he has to show for it is an (at best) $7.2bn a year add-on business to M365, GitHub Copilot (neutered with Token-based billing) and Azure AI revenue that's around 70% OpenAI's compute
@cousingraig Graig on x
$msft citing 20m paid copilot users at ~$30/mo, midteen PBP growth, 6% msft365 com seat growth, path to usage rev model, & margin expansion. shouldn't the value of “the software biz” get a bump? And growing azure 40% w/ allocation issues. I thought this was a good Q for the LT

Chronicles

Analysis: Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon's capex combined hit a record $130B in Q1, and it is set to reach $725B in 2026, up 77% from $410B in 2025

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