Symbolic imageBig Tech AI spending climbs as Meta books $279bn in data-centre leases
Amazon reported capital expenditure up 69 percent, and Meta disclosed $279 billion in future data-centre lease obligations tied to its artificial-intelligence build-out. Microsoft's figures showed the same build-out holding up, with profit rising on cloud and data-centre leasing. The reporting agrees that spending keeps growing; it splits on whether investors will keep paying for it.
What happened
Amazon's capital expenditure rose 69 percent, according to results reported on Friday, 31 July, extending a run of increases across the largest US technology firms. A day earlier, on Thursday, 30 July, Meta disclosed $279 billion in future data-centre lease obligations tied to its artificial-intelligence build-out, a figure Bloomberg reported directly from the company's filing. Microsoft's quarterly figures showed profit rising on record cloud revenue and data-centre leasing. Bloomberg and the New York Times work from the same numbers and neither reports any of the companies scaling back their spending plans. What separates them is the reading: Bloomberg calls the spending spree solid, the Times reports that concerns over the industry's outlays are mounting. Markets have sorted the sector along the same line, with Korean chip stocks losing 16 percent over two days.
What could happen next
The disagreement now sits in valuations rather than in the build-out itself, with investors pricing each firm by the size of its AI bill and by what it can show in return. Meta enters that judgement with a plan Bloomberg describes as dystopian but lucrative, and with lease commitments that are contractual rather than discretionary, which fixes a large share of its future costs regardless of demand. Around the same build-out, Nvidia's reported $250 billion backstop for OpenAI's roughly $500 billion data-centre project remains unconfirmed by either company, while NextEra and Brookfield have agreed a separate $100 billion campus in Kentucky, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The next markers are the remaining quarterly disclosures and whether other firms follow Meta in putting long-term lease obligations on the record.