A.I. boom prompts massive capex at Meta and heavy spending elsewhere, payoff unclear

Meta said last night it would spend up to $135 billion on capital expenditures this year, much of it on artificial intelligence, and its stock rose; Microsoft’s stock fell more than 6 percent after the company reported earnings, DealBook said. Tech giants’ A.I. spending plans are enormous.

Microsoft spent $37.5 billion in capital expenditures in its most recent quarter, up 65 percent year-on-year. Meta said it planned to spend $115 billion to $135 billion in capex this year, nearly double the $72 billion it spent last year, and said much of that money will go to data centers.

The piece also notes other big bets: Meta bought a Singapore-based A.I. start-up for $2 billion, Microsoft is reportedly planning to invest billions more in OpenAI, and Tesla said it would invest $2 billion in xAI and spend $20 billion in capex to move beyond making electric vehicles.

Investors appeared worried about Microsoft because data-center investments had not translated into a clear acceleration in its A.I. business. Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, told analysts that limited availability of A.I. hardware was a major cap on how quickly the cloud business could grow.

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