Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta AI Spending Makes Up As Much Of GDP As Building All American Railroads From 1850 Through 1859

by | Feb 9, 2026 | General

The majority of the Magnificent Seven stocks have reported their latest quarterly financial results. Within the results and guidance from the large tech companies come estimates for their 2026 CapEx.

Here’s a look at just how much four of the largest companies are spending and how it compares to past infrastructure build-outs in American history.

• What’s next for META stock?

CapEx Spending Could Top $670 Billion in 2026 For Four Giants

The recent earnings reports from Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) have come with high expectations for CapEx spending in 2026.

Here’s the breakdown:

  • Meta Platforms: up to $135 billion
  • Amazon.com: up to $200 billion
  • Microsoft: up to $150 billion
  • Alphabet: up to $185 billion

Add it up, and you get $670 billion.

Now, just how large is that total from four Magnificent Seven companies? The Wall Street Journal did the calculations to see where the spending ranks among some of the largest spending items for the U.S. in its history to advance technology and infrastructure.

Here are those rankings based on the percentage of GDP and the $670 billion estimate:

  • Louisiana Purchase: 3%
  • Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet estimated 2026 CapEx: 2.1%
  • U.S Railroads built from 1850 through 1859: 2%
  • U.S. interstate highway system 1955 through 1970: 0.4%
  • Apollo space program: 0.2%

The spending by the four companies ranks ahead of some of the biggest U.S. expansions ever, trailing only the Louisiana Purchase in terms of a percentage of GDP in the publication’s calculations.

Investors Cautious on Spending

As the spending increases for the technology giants, investors and analysts are getting more cautious as the percentage of annual revenue represented by CapEx rises.

In 2025, Meta and Microsoft both had capital spending of over 30% of annual revenue, while Amazon was around 20% and Alphabet was around 15%.

The report shows that Meta’s spending could be more than 50% of annual revenue for the first time ever.

The companies are spending aggressively to build out data centers, AI platforms and more to keep up with the rapidly growing AI sector and capabilities.

Higher spending makes investors more likely to exit the stock with signs of lower growth or weakness. The recent earnings reports saw mixed results from investors, despite company beats and strong guidance figures.

Here are the year-to-date and one-year returns of the four stocks after the latest quarterly earnings.

  • META: YTD +4.4%, One-Year -5.3%
  • AMZN: YTD -7.8%, One-Year -10.4%
  • MSFT: YTD -12.8%, One-Year +0.1%
  • GOOGL: YTD +2.7%, One-Year +73.5%

Only Alphabet and Meta are positive on the year in 2026 and Alphabet is the only one of the four that is positive by more than a small percentage and the only one beating the one-year +14.8% gain of the S&P 500 currently.

As shown by the year-to-date returns, investors are less likely to love hearing that companies are ramping up CapEx, unless they have the growth to justify it. Amazon’s plans to increase capital spending by around 60% to a total higher than peers saw shares get hit hard last week.

While the CapEx spending by the four companies is among the largest in terms of the percentage of GDP compared to some historical events, investors aren’t being won over by the large figures yet.

Photo: Khairil Azhar Junos via Shutterstock