The $175 Billion Moat: Why AI Startups Can’t Out-Spend Big Tech

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/04/alphabet-resets-the-bar-for-ai-infrastructure-spending.html

Google is planning to spend between $175 billion and $185 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, with the vast majority going toward AI infrastructure. For context, Meta expects to spend $115–135 billion, and Amazon is projected at around $147 billion.

Even the most generously valued AI-native companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI—can't match this scale. And even if they could somehow raise that much capital, deploying $175 billion a year on infrastructure (while generating a sensible return) is far harder than it sounds. These hyperscalers have decades of experience building and operating data centers at scale. That's not something you can buy overnight.