Apple’s planned capital expenditures for 2026 land somewhere around $13 to $14 billion. That sounds like a lot of money until you realize Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are collectively expected to spend between $650 and $700 billion on AI-related infrastructure in the same period.
The gap is staggering. Apple’s rivals are outspending it by roughly 50-to-1 on the infrastructure buildout. And yet Apple is sitting on more than $130 billion in cash reserves, having returned $104.7 billion to shareholders in fiscal year 2025 alone. This isn’t a company that can’t afford to spend. It’s a company that’s choosing not to.
The partnership play over the infrastructure play
Rather than constructing massive data center empires, Apple has opted for a different playbook. In January 2026, the company announced a multi-year collaboration with Google to leverage its Gemini AI technology for future developments, including upgrades to Siri and other product capabilities. The deal is reportedly worth about $1 billion annually.
This Google partnership follows Apple’s earlier collaboration with OpenAI, which kicked off in 2024. The pattern is clear: Apple would rather rent AI capability from partners than build it from scratch. Tim Cook has emphasized incremental AI investment that complements existing products, with modest capex growth tied primarily to Private Cloud Compute infrastructure.
