With the projection, Alphabet is resetting the year’s expectations for how it’ll spend in 2026 and testing its favor with Wall Street. The company said in October that it expected “a significant increase” to capex in 2026, but the projections shared Wednesday surpassed those of its hyperscaler peers.
In its quarterly report last week, Microsoft didn’t provide a specific forecast for the year, but said capex will “decrease on a sequential basis” this quarter, after the company reported spending of $37.5 billion in the latest period. Meta said it expects to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion in 2026, which at the high end would be almost double last year’s figure of $72.2 billion.
