US Tech Giants Ramp Up AI Investment: Is This Mid-Air Refueling or the Last Gasp?

From OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft (MSFT-US), SpaceX (SPCX-US), to Google, multiple overseas tech giants have unveiled investment plans in AI within a single day, pouring massive capital into AI infrastructure.

First, Google's highly anticipated Q2 earnings report delivered strong results, exceeding market expectations across multiple metrics. The company announced an upward revision of its 2026 capital expenditure range to $195 billion–$205 billion and explicitly stated that investment scale will further expand in 2027.

OpenAI has raised its compute spending plan through 2030 from $600 billion to $750 billion and plans to invest $20 billion to build a data center in Georgia, USA.

Anthropic has signed a major chip supply and investment agreement with AMD. Starting in the first half of 2027, Anthropic will purchase up to 2GW of AMD’s latest Instinct MI450 chips. In return, AMD will invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic.

Microsoft (MSFT-US) is expanding its European footprint by deepening its partnership with French AI startup Mistral AI. Microsoft will provide billions of dollars to support the construction of GPU data centers in Europe and fully integrate Mistral’s core AI models into its product ecosystem, including Azure and Copilot.

SpaceX (SPCX-US) is also moving to expand its data center operations. It has been reported to be evaluating multiple sites in Texas, laying the groundwork for at least one large-scale data center.

Mid-Air Refueling or the Last Gasp?

For the past two years, AI capital expenditure has been a key focus during every U.S. earnings season. As the new earnings cycle begins, Google’s above-expectation spending plan reaffirms its commitment to AI. The massive investments by OpenAI, Anthropic, and other leaders further demonstrate that Silicon Valley giants have not yet hit the brakes on AI spending.

However, despite strong financial results and optimistic management commentary during earnings calls, Google’s stock fell over 4% after hours. The core reason lies in cash flow. Its Q2 free cash flow was -$5.86 billion, significantly below market expectations and marking the first time Alphabet (GOOGL-US) has reported negative quarterly free cash flow since going public.

According to media analysis based on LSEG consensus data, if current trends continue, by 2027, the combined capital expenditures of tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Amazon (AMZN-US), Meta (META-US), and Oracle (ORCL-US) are expected to exceed their generated free cash flow.

These companies are projected to increase annual operating cash flow by approximately $340 billion from 2025 to 2027, but capital expenditures are expected to rise by about $534 billion—meaning that for every $1 increase in cash flow, an additional $1.57 must be invested.

Shay Boloor, Chief Market Strategist at Futurum Equities, stated, 'Investors have underestimated how fundamentally AI is transforming the business models of large tech companies.'

Boloor further noted that these companies were traditionally viewed as light-asset platforms because revenue growth far outpaced capital needs. But AI is pushing them toward a hybrid model—where the economics of software, advertising, and cloud computing are increasingly dependent on massive physical infrastructure.

David Russell, Global Market Strategist at TradeStation, warned, 'If capital expenditures are consuming cash, profit growth alone may not justify these investments. The purpose of a company is to make money, not spend it.'

Huatai Securities pointed out that while cloud service providers continue to raise capital expenditure forecasts, revenue realization has become the next key focus. The market is increasingly scrutinizing cloud vendors’ input-output ratios—measured by model capability improvements, token cost reductions, and incremental advertising/cloud revenue per unit of capital spending.