Seattle, 29 October. Amazon spent 77.3 billion dollars on buildings and equipment in the third quarter of 2026 — more than any other technology company — and confirmed its plan for almost 220 billion dollars of capital expenditure for the full year, the company’s report says; together with Alphabet and Microsoft, which reported a day earlier, the three corporations invested about 174 billion dollars in infrastructure in a quarter, above all for artificial intelligence.
The cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS) grew 39% to 46 billion dollars of revenue, its fastest growth in nearly five years. “Our AWS investment in functionality and infrastructure is working,” said Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy, who promised cloud growth of more than 40% in both 2027 and 2028. The backlog of signed but not yet fulfilled AWS contracts, he said, reached 578 billion dollars and more than doubled in a year. Amazon’s quarterly capital spending came in almost 20 billion dollars above analysts’ expectations, earnings per share were 1.89 dollars against an expected 1.96, and the shares fell more than 7% after the close.
Alphabet, the owner of Google, invested 51.4 billion dollars in the quarter — more than double the 24 billion a year earlier — kept its full-year forecast at 195–205 billion dollars and reported negative free cash flow of more than 9 billion dollars for the second quarter running. Chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi explained that outside computing capacity “came online only at the very end of Q3.” The company missed expectations on revenue and earnings, and on 29 October its shares fell about 12%.
Microsoft invested 45.2 billion dollars including finance leases — less than the expected 50.7 billion — and cut its forecast for the fiscal year from 175 to 170 billion dollars. Chief financial officer Amy Hood blamed delays at outside suppliers of graphics processors: some capacity will only come online in the first half of 2027. Microsoft’s revenue grew 19% to 92.3 billion dollars, and the Azure cloud grew 48%.
What it means: The world’s three largest cloud providers keep building AI computing capacity at a pace that outruns their own cash flows; investors now judge not only revenue growth but also which of them pays for the build-out from earnings and which from borrowing.
Who benefits: Makers of chips, servers and electrical equipment — orders worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Cloud customers — more capacity available for AI. For Alphabet and Amazon shareholders, rising spending with negative cash flow cost a fall in share prices; Microsoft, in the market’s view, is still paying its own way.
Background: Capital expenditure is money spent on buildings, servers, networks and equipment that pays off over years rather than a quarter. In June 2026 Alphabet announced an 80-billion-dollar equity raise to expand AI infrastructure, including 10 billion dollars from Berkshire Hathaway, and said then that demand for its AI services exceeded available capacity. Meta, which reported on 21 October, expects 135–145 billion dollars of capital expenditure in 2026.
