TL;DRAlphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft hold roughly $2.4tn in AI spending commitments, and two are already cash-flow negative
The four largest US technology companies have locked in nearly two and a half trillion dollars in purchase commitments, contractual obligations, and leases tied to artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Alphabet leads the group with about $900 billion in total commitments, a figure roughly nine times higher than a year earlier. Meta follows with about $700 billion in future spending, Amazon has budgeted $220 billion in capital expenditure for this year alone, and Microsoft’s own obligations round out the group.
The numbers capture more than annual capex. They include long-term purchase orders for chips, power contracts, and data centre leases that stretch decades into the future, commitments that will eventually land on balance sheets but for now sit in financial footnotes. About half of Meta’s total is tied to data centre leases running as long as 30 years, roughly eight times what the company carried a year ago.
Alphabet’s commitments have grown at a similar pace, much of it structured through off-balance-sheet vehicles that keep the headline debt figures looking tidy.
