Four horsemen of the AI-pocalypse line up capex bigger than Israel's GDP

AIpocolypse Four tech megacorps intend to collectively fork out roughly $635 billion this year on capex, much of it for datacenters and AI infrastructure - more than the entire output of Israel's economy and well beyond all global cloud infrastructure services revenue generated last year.

The tech titans are all trying to outdo each other by spending eye-watering amounts on capex, the majority of which will go on AI and cloud expansion, but the big four - AWS, Microsoft, Google and Meta - are investing at a different scale.

Amazon says it expects to spend $200 billion in 2026, with most of that headed to AWS. Google is aiming to pump $180 billion into building and equipping datacenters, while Meta expects capex in the range of $115 billion to $135 billion, and Microsoft is running at a pace that implies around $120 billion a year in spending.

That adds up to $635 billion, more than the $610 billion that represented Israel's entire gross domestic product during 2025, and approaching that of Sweden at $662 billion, according to figures from the IMF.

These extraordinary sums show how far the industry leaders are willing to go to gain some kind of advantage in the AI race, even though returns on all the spending have so far failed to live up to expectations, and investors are reportedly getting restless. Microsoft's share price fell about 10 percent after its recent results were announced, for example, due to investors expecting a bigger payoff.

The wider cost for users? The massive splurge on infrastructure is driving shortages of components like memory as manufacturers prioritize chip production that cashes in on the lucrative datacenter market, rather than those for everyday PCs and phones.

The huge capex pledges also add up to more than total cloud infrastructure services revenue in 2025. According to the latest figures from Synergy Research Group, the revenues reached $419 billion last year.

This is despite the cloud market itself continuing to grow at an impressive pace, running at about 30 percent year-on-year and marking a ninth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth.

"GenAI has simply put the cloud market into overdrive," said Synergy Research Group chief analyst John Dinsdale. "AI-specific services account for much of the growth since 2022, but AI technology has also enhanced the broader portfolio of cloud services, driving revenue growth across the board. The leading cloud providers have all seen their revenue growth rates jump."

The big three clouds continue to dominate with Synergy putting their shares of the worldwide market in Q4 2025 at 28 percent for Amazon (AWS), 21 percent for Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud at 14 percent.

Among the tier-two cloud providers, those with the highest growth rates include CoreWeave, Oracle, Crusoe, and Nebius, all providers of AI infrastructure services. In particular, CoreWeave is now generating more than $1.5 billion in quarterly cloud revenue and has joined the top ten cloud providers, Synergy says. ®