Originally published on DropThe.org.
On Monday, Meta and Nvidia announced a multi-year deal that puts millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs into Meta’s data centers. Not thousands. Millions. Along with Grace and Vera CPUs and Spectrum-X networking — a full-stack Nvidia buildout that positions Meta as one of the largest single buyers of AI compute on the planet.
The deal is massive. But it is not unusual. It is the latest move in an infrastructure arms race that has pushed combined AI capex from five US tech companies past $690 billion for 2026. Nearly double what they spent in 2025.
We tracked the spending commitments of every major player in this race — from the hyperscalers pouring hundreds of billions into data centers to the AI startups burning through revenue faster than they earn it. Here is where each company stands.
The $690 Billion Year
Five companies account for nearly all of it. Their 2026 capital expenditure plans, most of it directed at AI compute and data centers:
$200B
$175-185B
$115-135B
$120B+
$50B
Source: DROPTHE_ analysis of public earnings guidance and capex commitments, Feb 2026
Amazon leads at $200 billion — a number that shocked even bullish analysts. Consensus expectations had been closer to $147 billion. CEO Andy Jassy defended the figure by pointing to AWS revenue hitting a $142 billion annualized run rate with growth accelerating to 24% year-over-year. The stock still dropped 8-10% on the announcement.
Alphabet‘s $175-185 billion plan has been revised upward three times from an initial $71-73 billion target for 2025. CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged the scale causes concern internally. But the cloud backlog surged 55% sequentially to over $240 billion. The demand is real.
This is an excerpt. Read the full analysis with charts and data on DropThe.org
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DropThe is a data platform tracking 1.83 million entities across movies, games, companies, people, and crypto — connected by 2.18 million knowledge graph links. We don't guess. We count.
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