Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple spent US$92.2 billion on capital expenditures in Q2 2025, up 66.7% from the same period last year, as they ramp up AI infrastructure investments.

Amazon led with US$32.18 billion, an 82.6% increase, but its stock dropped 8.1% over concerns that high spending was eroding profit margins in its cloud division.

Meta doubled its spending to US$17.01 billion, citing the AI arms race as the main driver.

Microsoft raised capital expenditures by 23% to US$17.07 billion, which correlated with a 39% increase in cloud revenue.

Google’s spending rose 70.2% to US$22.45 billion, and it raised its capital spending forecast by US$10 billion to expand capacity.

Apple increased its spending by 60.9% to US$3.46 billion, though it still lags far behind peers, raising concerns about its AI position.

Despite the massive investments, revenue growth from AI remains limited compared to the scale of spending.

🔗 Source: Calcalist

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ A tale of two markets emerges in AI investment confidence

While Big Tech doubles down with record spending, the broader business world is pulling back from AI investments due to trust issues.

Research involving 4,200 C-suite executives found that 61% of global businesses are scaling back AI investments, despite 88% acknowledging AI’s importance for success1.

The primary barriers include lack of AI skills (23%), governance challenges (23%), and budget constraints (21%)—concerns that don’t seem to affect the tech giants featured in the original story1.

This divergence suggests we’re seeing a market bifurcation where companies with deep technical expertise and vast resources are accelerating their AI bets, while smaller players struggle with implementation challenges.

2️⃣ AI investment scale has exploded beyond historical precedent

The current $350 billion annual spending by just five tech companies represents a dramatic escalation from the entire global AI investment landscape less than a decade ago.

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