Google’s expenditure on AI is eye watering

Before I saw this chart, I knew that the hyperscalers had been spending huge amounts on datacentre infrastructure, but I had some vague idea that Amazon was spending the most, followed by Microsoft, then and Google. Boy was I wrong.

Google has been outspending the other huge hyperscalers since 2018

This chart is from an exponential view newsletter, and the post Is AI a bubble? In the post, it lays out a framework for telling when we’re in a bubble, versus being in a generational boom, and as someone who has been pretty skeptical of the AI the project, it’s been really informative. It’s worth a read.

Anyway – this is one of the charts from it. I had no idea that Google had been outspending Microsoft and Amazon put together some years over the last five years:

"Bar chart titled 'Hyperscalers' annual capex has more than doubled since ChatGPT's release.' The chart displays the annual capital expenditures (capex) of major hyperscalers from 2018 to 2026, with 2025 and 2026 reflecting estimates. The y-axis represents capex in billions of USD, ranging from 0 to over 400 billion USD. The x-axis represents the years 2018, 2020, 2022, 2024, and 2026. The chart includes five companies: AMZN (Amazon), META (Meta), GOOGL (Google), MSFT (Microsoft), and ORCL (Oracle), each represented by different colored segments within the bars. The chart shows a significant increase in capex over the years, with a notable jump after 2022. By 2026, the total capex is estimated to exceed 400 billion USD, indicating a more than doubling of investments since the release of ChatGPT. The data source is Citi Research, and the chart is presented by Exponential View."


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