Four big tech firms have guided 2026 AI capex up to $745 billion, and a third of that money is borrowed

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft have now guided combined 2026 capital spending to $720-745 billion. The previous guide was $695-725 billion, so this earnings season moved it up another step. By company: Amazon $220 billion, Alphabet $195-205 billion, Microsoft $175 billion, Meta $130-145 billion.

Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon capex to hit $725 billion in 2026, up 77% from last year (Tom's Hardware, 2026-04-30)

출처: finance.yahoo.com

Back in April, Tom's Hardware already put the year's combined total at $725 billion, a 77% increase on last year's $410 billion. The scale has close to doubled in twelve months.

Where the money goes

Capital spending buys data centres and what goes inside them. Chips, servers, networking gear, and the power equipment to run all of it. What the original post is pointing at is where that money passes through. When trillions flow into things that were treated as cheap commodities, indium phosphide substrates or memory, the companies making them get repriced. Nvidia's graphics chips did this over the past few years and memory did it this year, is the observation. Next in line, it argues, are processors and multilayer ceramic capacitors, then optical parts and glass substrates in 2027.

Where the money comes from

This is where the part missing from the earnings calls starts.

Hyperscalers tap external financing as AI capex outruns cash flow (FactSet, 2026-07-23)

출처: insight.factset.com

FactSet puts combined FY26 capex for five hyperscalers above $690 billion, growing more than 80% year on year, the largest annual increase of this cycle. It expects free cash flow this year to move close to zero or turn negative for all of them except Alphabet and Microsoft. Free cash flow is what is left from operating cash once capital spending is taken out. Negative means spending more than the business brings in, so the difference has to come from somewhere else. And it is being brought in. Alphabet raised $84.75 billion of equity in June and Amazon issued $25 billion of bonds. Incremental debt as a share of capital spending rose from 9% in FY24 to 32% by mid-2026, and total debt across the group reached roughly $700 billion. In July S&P cut Oracle to BBB-, citing surging capex, negative free cash flow and customer concentration.

The same figure reads differently depending on where you look. Size of spend is evidence of demand. Source of spend is a credit question.

So what will tell us which it was

In the end the question is one. Whether this spending is carried by what the businesses earn, or only lasts while the credit market stays open. The place to look is how it is funded. If capex rises again next quarter while bond issues and equity raises shrink, operating cash is catching up with the spending. If capex and funding grow together, the repricing of upstream parts is tied to credit conditions rather than to the companies' results. The order books at component makers really are getting thicker. But if a third of the money filling those books is borrowed, reading the order book off the customer's income statement alone is not enough.