Big Tech Is Spending $700 Billion. These Companies Get Paid

Every quarter, Wall Street asks the same question: is the AI spending boom real, or is it a story companies are telling to justify valuations? Last week, Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META) answered that question definitively.

Together, they committed more than $700 billion in 2026 capital spending to build out AI infrastructure, explicitly guiding for that number to climb again in 2027.

The picks-and-shovels trade is the visible part of this cycle, but what forms around it (what gets built on top of all that infrastructure once it goes online) is where the next phase of the AI fortune gets made.

This post originally appeared at InvestorPlace.