The four largest AI spenders in tech now plan to pour more than $700 billion into capital expenditures in 2026. Investors are starting to wonder if anyone ran the numbers on a napkin first.
Alphabet kicked off the anxiety spiral on July 22 when it raised its 2026 capex guidance to a range of $195 billion to $205 billion, a $15 billion jump from its prior estimate of $180 billion to $190 billion. The company pointed to surging demand for AI infrastructure and cloud services as the reason. Wall Street’s response was swift and unforgiving.
The sell-off spread fast
Alphabet shares dropped roughly 6% after the earnings announcement. But the damage didn’t stop there.
Amazon and Oracle each fell more than 4%. Meta slid 3%. Microsoft declined over 2%.
