Amazon plans on spending more than $100 billion on capex in 2025

In total, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet intend to spend a whopping $315 billion in capital expenditures this year.

Jon Keegan, David Crowther

2/7/25 11:05AM

While Amazon’s Q4 earnings may have disappointed investors with some gloomy guidance for the current quarter, its plans for 2025 are grand indeed.

In the past few weeks, all of Big Tech has been revealing the scale of its plans for spending on AI infrastructure, and it’s like everyone is trying to outdo each other with increasingly massive capex estimates.

At the start of the year, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, wrote in a blog post that the company was on track to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in 2025.
Then, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company would spend up to $65 billion on capex, including a city-sized data center.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai upped the ante, pledging $75 billion for AI and related infrastructure, including undersea cables.
Not to be outdone, Amazon CFO Brian T. Olsavsky told analysts on the Q4 earnings call that his company’s Q4 capex of $26.3 billion “will be reasonably representative of our 2025 capital investment rate,” which works out to over $100 billion.

Taken together, the top players in the industry are committing over $315 billion for this year alone.

4 big tech companies plan on spending $315+ billion on capex this year

“Lumpy” growth for AWS

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sounded extremely bullish about the company’s AWS cloud computing unit — which had $28.8 billion in sales for Q4 — but warned, “We expect growth will be lumpy over the next few years,” due to fast-changing technology and unpredictable capacity planning.

Amazon is in a unique position in the current AI revolution, as it offers up solutions for each layer of the “AI stack.” It hosts cloud computing to train new models, runs any number of leading AI models, and quickly offered DeepSeek’s breakthrough models for its customers on its Bedrock and SageMaker platforms.

It also makes its own foundational model family named Nova, in addition to its Rufus AI shopping assistant, and is still working out the kinks on its next-generation Alexa.

In addition to selling cloud computing powered by market leader Nvidia, Amazon is also a few generations into its own specialized AI computing chips, “Trainium” and “Inferentia.”

When asked about the race to the bottom for computing costs fueled by new, cheaper approaches to train and run AI systems like DeepSeek, Jassy thought it would just translate into more business for the company, agreeing with Jevons Paradox:

“People thought that people would spend a lot less money on infrastructure technology. And what happens is companies will spend a lot less per unit of infrastructure, and that is very, very useful for their businesses. But then they get excited about what else they could build that they always thought was cost prohibitive before, and they usually end up spending a lot more in total on technology once you make the per unit cost less.”

Leap year wrinkle

As a reminder of the massive scale of Amazon’s business, the extra day on the 2024 calendar due to leap year actually affected the company’s guidance for the current quarter.

Just that one extra day generated $1.5 billion in sales across all of its units.

Max Knoblauch6/15/26

Electronic Arts launches a platform to put more ads in its games

Video game publishing giant EA launched a new platform on Monday designed to make the process of selling immersive ad space in its popular games easier.

The company says the platform, called EA Advertising, allows brands to “integrate directly into gameplay through dynamic, real-time placements, from stadium signage to custom in-game content.”

More so than other studios, EA has incorporated advertising into its most popular titles. As Kotaku points out, the company’s ad efforts stretch as far back as 2006. Several of its sports franchises already feature partnerships with brands like Visa, Lowe’s, Red Bull, and PepsiCo.

In-game advertising hasn’t exactly been embraced by fans, but industry experts expect it to ramp up as companies seek more revenue to offset higher games budgets and surging memory costs. EA rival Take-Two has taken a different approach, with CEO Strauss Zelnick recently saying the company was “not at risk of doing brand partnerships” in the forthcoming “Grand Theft Auto VI,” and that ads in full-price games seems “unfair.”

The $55 billion deal to take EA private, led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is set to close at the end of this month. Being the largest leveraged buyout in history, EA will likely look for more ways to boost revenue to cover interest payments.

Electronic Arts Makes Push for Ad Dollars Tied to Sports

Millie Giles6/11/26

JM Smucker says it sold $1 billion worth of Uncrustables in FY2026

After years of booming sandwich sales, JM Smucker has finally earned a billion-dollar crust.

On Tuesday, the company reported results for fiscal year 2026, highlighting better-than-expected profits driven by higher prices for coffee and sweet baked goods. However, at another point on the earnings call, CEO Mark Smucker pointed to one particularly jammy figure: in line with previous forecasts, the company sold $1 billion worth of its (almost always) crustless sandwiches, Uncrustables, in the last year alone.

Max Knoblauch6/8/26

Paramount reportedly offers concessions to resolve multistate antitrust investigation

Paramount has reportedly offered up some concessions in an effort to prevent an antitrust lawsuit by California and about 10 other states, according to Bloomberg reporting on Monday.

Reuters first reported on the potential suit from a group of unnamed states last week, which could throw a wrench in Paramount’s plans to buy rival Warner Bros. Discovery in a Hollywood megamerger.

The list of concessions is unknown, though Bloomberg previously reported that Paramount is open to divesting some of its kids TV assets to appease EU regulators.

Late last month, reports said US regulators appeared likely to approve the $110 billion merger, following a meeting between Paramount CEO David Ellison and DOJ antitrust staffers.

Paramount Offers Concessions to Head Off State Antitrust Lawsuit

The list of concessions is unknown, though Bloomberg previously reported that Paramount is open to divesting some of its kids TV assets to appease EU regulators.

Late last month, reports said US regulators appeared likely to approve the $110 billion merger, following a meeting between Paramount CEO David Ellison and DOJ antitrust staffers.

$98B ⛽

Max Knoblauch6/8/26

The IATA released its latest financial outlook for the airline industry over the weekend, forecasting a $98 billion jump in the sector’s collective fuel bill. The world’s largest trade group representing airlines expects the oil spike to halve profits by 49% from last year to $23 billion.

The group also expects profit margins to halve year over year, falling from 2025’s 4.2% to 2%. Still, revenue is expected to climb to $1.17 trillion from $1.07 trillion.

A surge in the cost of jet fuel has rocked US and global airlines this year, leading Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, and others to raise fares and ancillary charges like bag fees. Low-cost carriers, which operate on smaller margins, have been squeezed the hardest, resulting in Spirit’s shutdown.

“It’s a tough year for all airlines, especially those whose balance sheets had not yet recovered from COVID. And, of course, for those operating in the Gulf,” said IATA Director General Willie Walsh, who added that demand is holding up and about half of passengers expect to spend more on travel this year. “That bodes well for a strong northern summer peak season. The big unknown is how long travelers and shippers can tolerate the higher costs of connectivity.”