Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet plan to spend $670 billion on AI infrastructure this year. As a percentage of GDP, that’s significantly more than the cost of sending people to the moon.
Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet plan to spend $670 billion on AI infrastructure this year. As a percentage of GDP, that’s significantly more than the cost of sending people to the moon.
The Wall Street Journal estimated that the money that big tech companies plan to spend on AI in 2026 exceeds the largest spending in American history.
This is larger than the expansion of the railroad network in the 1850s, the Apollo space program that put astronauts on the moon in the 1960s, and the great construction of US highways that was completed in the 1970s.
Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are set to spend $670 billion on AI data centers to increase the computing power needed to operate and scale their AI-related projects.
When you compare these costs to some of the largest capital expenditures in U.S. history as a percentage of gross domestic product, spending on AI in 2026 is second only to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which doubled the size of the country.
