Big Tech Holds $2 Trillion of Spending Commitments for AI Boom

(Bloomberg) -- The four largest players in the data center race have committed nearly $2.4 trillion in spending over the coming years, pointing to massive ongoing investment in AI infrastructure.

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Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. have each reported ballooning commitments on leases, buildings, energy and other equipment over the last year as they've rushed to build fleets of data centers. This is a mix of short-term spending and some pledges that are as long as decades away.

Take the example of Google parent Alphabet: Last week, it disclosed $902 billion of purchase commitments, contractual obligations and leases that have not yet commenced. That figure is more than nine times higher than it was a year earlier. The tally includes agreements for technical equipment, energy and leases, according to the company's regulatory filing.

Meta has reported a similarly sharp ramp-up, disclosing almost $700 billion in future spending. About half of that is for data center leases that haven't yet started, and will be paid off over periods as long as 30 years. The company's total commitments are more than eight times higher than a year earlier.

Tech's big debate this year has been whether the hundreds of billions being spent on server farms for artificial intelligence work will really pay off. Alphabet and Amazon have each tipped into negative free cash flow, with Meta expected to follow soon. All the companies signaled increased spending plans during their recent earnings reports, generally citing a need to capture massive demand for AI computing power.

Not all of the spending is strictly tied to data centers, and each company discloses commitments in slightly different ways, making it difficult to compare them directly. For example, Meta notes that some of its planned spending is related to consumer hardware products in the Reality Labs division. Alphabet and Amazon each note planned spending on content licenses.

On Thursday, Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy argued that the company was essentially going through an accelerated version of the first Amazon Web Services cloud unit build-out, where steep spending in early years will lead to great returns later on. Even allocating $220 billion in capital expenditures this year won't be enough to meet all of its cloud infrastructure demand, he said. AWS reported a 37% jump in revenue in the second quarter, the fastest pace of growth since the end of 2021.

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--With assistance from Neil Callanan.

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