Meta, Google, and Microsoft double their spending on artificial intelligence

Three of the biggest U.S. tech giants — Microsoft, Meta, and Google — sent a clear message to investors when they announced their quarterly earnings on Wednesday: Lavish spending on Artificial intelligence infrastructure Just started.

Meta said its total capital spending would range between $70 billion and $72 billion this year, up from its previous lower forecast of $66 billion to $72 billion. Next year, Meta’s chief financial officer, Susan Lee, said she expects the company’s spending to be “significantly greater.” The social media giant’s increased investment matches its rising revenue: Meta reported $51.24 billion in the latest quarter, up 26 percent year over year.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will continue to pour money into infrastructure to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence and prepare for potentially major breakthroughs in the technology. “There’s a range of timelines for when people think we’ll get superintelligence,” Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts. “I think the right strategy is to front-load aggressively to build capacity, that way we are prepared for the most optimistic cases.”

Meta moved forcefully to Recruiting artificial intelligence talent In recent months, some researchers have been offered compensation packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The company also cut about 600 jobs last week in what it said was an effort to make its AI teams more efficient. Meta has reorganization its AI teams several times over the past eight months.

Meta assured investors that its investments in AI were already reaping rewards for the company, but did not share many details. Meta said that artificial intelligence was benefiting the company’s advertising business and virtual reality product lines, and she predicted that it would push those divisions to new heights in the future.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said it expects its capital expenditures for 2025 to range between $91 billion and $93 billion. Earlier this year, Alphabet estimated that number would be just $75 billion. As at Meta, the increase in spending was matched by an increase in revenue. The technology giant said it generated a record $102.3 billion in the third quarter, an increase of 33 percent from last year.

Most of Alphabet’s spending will likely go toward data centers and other AI initiatives. Google said it earned $15.15 billion from its cloud business in the third quarter, a 35 percent increase over the same period in 2024. Application of artificial intelligence for general purposesnow has 650 million monthly active users, up from 450 million last quarter. (For comparison, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently said that ChatGPT did just that 800 million weekly users.)

Microsoft reported revenue of $77 billion for the quarter ending September 30, up 18 percent from a year ago. Cloud business revenues rose 26 percent year over year. Its capital expenditures were $34.9 billion in the quarter, with a large portion of the investment going toward AI infrastructure. This number is about $5 billion more than previously expected, an increase of 74 percent over the same quarter last year.