Tech inventory futures have been up this morning—contracts for the Nasdaq 100 have been up 0.22% previous to the opening bell in New York—after a fistful of tech corporations mentioned they might improve their capital expenditures on AI, promising an enormous wave of money large enough to impact U.S. GDP growth.
The solely unhealthy information? Some analysts have begun to warn that the tempo of capex growth will begin to slow down this year and subsequent.
Shares in Meta and Tesla rose in in a single day buying and selling. Meta was up 7.85% and Tesla rose 3.29%. Microsoft, against this, declined 6.53% in a single day.
All three stocks have been pushed by their earnings calls, on which every firm promised to maintain spending on AI:
- Meta mentioned its capital expenditures (capex) may very well be $135 billion this year, practically double what it spent final year.
- Microsoft mentioned it had spent $72.4 billion within the first half of its fiscal year, and capex in its most up-to-date quarter was larger than the earlier one, however growth at its Azure cloud unit was slowing—therefore the hit to the inventory.
- Tesla mentioned it might double capex in 2026 because it shifts away from EV automobile manufacturing towards AI and robots. The firm additionally mentioned it might plow $2 billion into Elon Musk’s xAI firm, which makes the Grok chatbot.
- In South Korea, Samsung additionally mentioned it might develop AI capex. “AI-related demand [at Samsung] is likely to continue expanding, and memory capex should rise substantially,” in response to Jefferies analysts Masahiro Nakanomyo and Hisako Furusumi’s abstract of the decision. “Capital outlays in 2026 will focus on … future business expansion.” Memory chip maker SK Hynix will do the identical, they mentioned.
- And OpenAI will take $40 billion in new funding from Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon as half of a $100 billion fundraising spherical, in response to the Financial Times. Much of that money will be spent on AI information facilities.
Clearly, tech stocks—and people of corporations that provide them with actual property, components, and energy for his or her information facilities—are going to be pushed by AI capex this year.
So how large will this incoming wave of money be?
Here’s a range of estimates from varied Wall Street analysts:
Goldman Sachs predicts AI capex will hit $539 billion, up 36% from $398 billion in 2025. It will develop to $629 billion in 2027, the financial institution mentioned, however that price of growth would solely be 17%.
Analyst Ben Snider and his colleagues warn that the growth price of AI capex will start to slow down.
“While odds are good that some of today’s largest companies achieve … success, the magnitudes of current spending and market caps alongside increasing competition within the group suggest a diminishing probability that all of today’s market leaders generate enough long-term profits to sufficiently reward today’s investors,” they suggested purchasers earlier this month.
Bank of America estimates there will be $641 billion in AI/cloud capex this year, up 36%, adopted by $739 billion subsequent year, up 15%. “Importantly, we flag [chipmaker] TSMC’s CY26 capex guide of ~$54bn (+32% YoY) is a good leading indicator of overall appetite for industry spending, given they speak with all hyperscalers closely and put down the first $ of risk capital in the industry,” analyst Vivek Arya wrote in a observe seen by Fortune.
Wells Fargo sees 34% growth in AI capex. “Consensus points to a big deceleration (+34% in 2026E vs. +70% LTM), but their capex consistently surprised to the upside, beating consensus capex from a year ago by 50ppt over the [last 12 months]. TSMC sales also suggest Hyperscalers’ capex could grow +49% YoY in 2026E. Our analysts expect higher capex for META, MSFT, & AMZN. It’s an AI arms race.” Ohsung Kwon and his colleague mentioned just lately in a analysis observe.
Piper Sandler believes the spending is so huge it will enhance U.S. GDP, partially as a result of knock-on results for the builders and vitality suppliers wanted to serve all the info facilities being constructed. “While data center construction spending has increased ‘just’ $18 billion, we estimate it’s triggered roughly $175 billion of incremental spending—equivalent to ~0.6% of GDP,” Nancy Lazar and her crew mentioned.
Here’s a snapshot of the markets forward of the opening bell in New York this morning:
- S&P 500 futures have been up 0.22% this morning. The final session closed flat at 6,978.03 after briefly going over 7,000, a brand new document excessive.
- STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.26% in early buying and selling.
- The U.Ok.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.38% in early buying and selling.
- Japan’s Nikkei 225 was flat.
- China’s CSI 300 was up 0.76%.
- The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.98%.
- India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.3%.
- Bitcoin declined to $87.9K.
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