Big Tech Will Spend 700 Billion Dollars This Year and Its Loudest Believer Just Said the Quiet Part
2026-06-18
“When the man selling the shovels warns the gold might run out, maybe stop swinging quite so hard.”
The numbers have officially left the atmosphere. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle have collectively guided to over 700 billion dollars in capital expenditure for 2026, a 44 percent jump on last year. That is not investment anymore, that is a religion with a build schedule. Five companies are pouring the GDP of a mid-sized country into chips, data centers and power, all betting the AI curve keeps bending up forever.
And then the plot twist. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the companies whose entire existence depends on this spending continuing, warned that the industry's trajectory is unsustainable if model scaling slows down. When the guy selling the most expensive shovels in the gold rush starts muttering about whether there is actually gold down there, you put your pickaxe down and listen.
Here is Sally's read. Either this is the most important infrastructure build in a generation, or it is the most expensive game of musical chairs ever staged, and right now even the people running it cannot agree which. Spending 700 billion dollars on a bet that the music never stops is a bold way to find out.
- Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle collectively guide to over 700 billion dollars in 2026 capital expenditure.
- That figure represents a 44 percent increase on the previous year.
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned the industry's spending trajectory is unsustainable if model scaling slows.
- It is the clearest sign yet that AI's biggest players disagree on whether this is a generational opportunity or a bubble.
- The entire build-out assumes demand and model capability keep scaling at the current breakneck pace.
- 01
Even a partial payoff leaves behind real, durable infrastructure: chips, data centers and energy capacity that outlast whatever hype paid for them. And a CEO willing to publicly question the spending he benefits from is exactly the kind of honesty this overheated industry could use more of.
- 01
Anyone whose pension quietly tracks these five stocks, which is most people who have a pension at all. If the curve flattens before the spending pays off, the bill for this 700 billion dollar leap of faith does not land on the executives who approved it. It lands on the index funds.
Got something the world should see roasted? Drop it.
A full teardown from €2,99. No mercy.