Big Four hyperscaler AI capex hits £548bn ($725bn) for 2026, up 77% YoY
TL;DR: Combined 2026 capital-expenditure plans from Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have risen to roughly £548 billion ($725 billion), the FT reports — 77% above last year’s record £310 billion ($410 billion). Google Cloud grew 63% in Q1 to £15bn ($20bn) and Alphabet shares rose 7% after-hours, on track to open at a £3.25tn ($4.3tn) record market cap. Meta fell 6% on its own capex jump and a vague AI roadmap.
Alphabet net income surged 81% to £47bn ($62.6bn) on Q1 revenue of £83bn ($110bn). Google now claims a £348bn ($460bn) backlog of data-centre rental contracts and lifted its 2026 capex guidance by £3.8bn ($5bn) to £143bn ($190bn), with CFO Anat Ashkenazi flagging “significantly increased” spend in 2027. Amazon’s contract pipeline reached £275bn ($364bn) at end of March; Microsoft’s cloud unit added £6bn ($7.9bn) in revenue to £26bn ($34.7bn).
Why the gap matters
Jefferies analyst Brent Thill called the AI economy “healthy”. Cloud boss Thomas Kurian attributed Google’s progress to its in-house AI chips, foundation models and products. The wider story, though, is about which capital pools the demand is being satisfied from: a recent £75bn ($100bn) Anthropic compute deal sits inside Amazon’s contract pipeline, while Microsoft is straining to add data centres fast enough to meet Azure demand.
For UK readers, the figures sharpen a familiar contrast. The £548 billion 2026 hyperscaler total is roughly five times the entire UK government capital budget. The UK’s recently-announced sovereign-compute commitments — sized in low single-digit billions — are not designed to match this; they are designed to secure access. The relevant question for British AI policy is therefore not how much to spend, but on what terms UK firms can buy capacity in a market where the four buyers above are setting the price.
Looking forward
Expect the £548bn figure to be cited heavily in debates over the upcoming UK AI Bill, the AI Growth Zones programme and the next tranche of sovereign-compute procurement. UK SaaS founders raising on AI revenue should also note investor mood: the same earnings cycle that rewarded Google for capex discipline-with-revenue punished Meta for capex-without-clarity. For UK firms pitching enterprise AI to investors, that asymmetry — capex tolerance only with paired revenue evidence — is the bar to clear.