A New Gilded Age: Big Tech goes on a $600 billion AI spending splurge

Big Tech is taking the AI age to a whole new level.

When Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta announced earnings recently, one set of numbers stole the show: The massive projections for data center spending this year.

Though the industry’s capital expenditures — spending on property and equipment — have ramped up in recent years, 2026 is shaping up to be leaps and bounds ahead of any private-sector infrastructure spending in modern history.

The projections draw comparisons to previous transformational eras, such as the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and the Information Age of the 1990s.

Still, Wall Street questions whether it will bring a return on investment — and investors are starting to get antsy. Shares of Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta were all down as of Friday morning. Microsoft was slightly up.