This is the first monthly AI Capex Tracker on MarketAnalysis.com: one page, refreshed each month, showing what the largest AI infrastructure buyers spent, what they say they will spend, how they pay for it, and where the money ends up. The September quarter closed the books on a simple number. Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle put $237.3 billion into capital spending in their latest quarter, against $121.9 billion a year earlier. That’s up 95%.
The number that changed most this month isn’t the capex. It’s the cash flow under it. Alphabet, Meta and Oracle all spent more on equipment and buildings in the quarter than their businesses generated in operating cash, and Amazon’s trailing twelve-month free cash flow is now an outflow of $42.4 billion. Microsoft is the one large spender still funding the build from income, and it came in under its own quarterly guide of more than $50 billion because third-party capacity it expected to take delivery of arrived late.
Scoreboard: the spenders
| Company | Latest quarter | Capex | Year ago | Change | 2026 guidance | 2027 signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Jul to Sep 2026 | $77.3B | $35.1B | +120% | About $220B | “Meaningfully more” |
| Alphabet | Jul to Sep 2026 | $51.4B | $24.0B | +114% | $195B to $205B | “Increase significantly”, detail in February |
| Microsoft | Jul to Sep 2026 | $45.2B | $34.9B | +30% | About $175B (calendar) | Over $50B in the December quarter, about $170B guided for fiscal 2027 |
| Meta | Jul to Sep 2026 | $34.9B | $19.4B | +80% | $135B to $145B | Aggressive investment continues |
| Oracle | Jun to Aug 2026 | $28.5B | $8.5B | +235% | $90B to $95B (FY to May 2027) | Net cash capex capped near $70B |
| CoreWeave | Apr to Jun 2026 | $9.4B | n/a | n/a | $35B to $39B | Reports Q3 on November 10 |
| Five spenders, ex CoreWeave | $237.3B | $121.9B | +95% |
Two adjustments sit inside those rows. Microsoft and Meta report capex including finance leases, Amazon reports purchases of property and equipment, and Alphabet’s cash capex has no lease component, so the rows are close cousins rather than identical measures. And Microsoft’s 30% looks slow mainly because of accounting. In July it lengthened the useful life of its buildings from 15 to 25 years, which moves future data center leases from finance to operating treatment and out of the capex line. Before that change its calendar-2026 plan was about $190 billion. The spending didn’t shrink. The definition did.
Amazon is the outlier on the chart. Its quarterly spend went from $54.2 billion to $77.3 billion in three months, about $18.6 billion above what analysts had pencilled in, and it still says about $220 billion for the year. That arithmetic leaves only about $44 billion to $48 billion for the December quarter, depending on which capex measure you use, so either the September pace drops by a third or the 2026 figure gets raised in February. Management has already said 2027 will be meaningfully higher, which makes the second outcome the likelier one.
The money now comes from outside the cash flow statement
| Company | Operating cash flow | Capex | Free cash flow | How the gap is funded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | $58.0B | $45.2B | +$18.6B (on cash paid for equipment) | Leases; debt markets untapped so far |
| Alphabet | $42.3B | $51.4B | -$9.1B | Long-term debt $125.1B vs $21.6B a year ago; $12.4B at-the-market stock sale; zero buybacks |
| Meta | $32.8B | $34.9B | -$2.1B | Debt $83.7B; El Paso joint venture with outside capital |
| Oracle | $23.1B | $28.5B | -$5.4B | $20B at-the-market equity; about $40B of debt and equity planned for the fiscal year; customer prepayments |
| Amazon | Trailing twelve months free cash flow: -$42.4B | Operating cash flow, existing balance sheet | ||
Alphabet is the cleanest example of the shift. Its capex was about 121% of operating cash flow in the quarter, the second negative free cash flow quarter in a row. Long-term debt went from $21.6 billion to $125.1 billion in a year. It sold shares into the market and bought back none. A company that spent a decade returning cash now issues equity to build data centers. Alphabet still holds $265 billion in cash and securities, so nobody should call it strained. It is a different company to own than the one the market priced on buybacks. The market’s reaction to that quarter is covered in our Alphabet Q3 2026 earnings analysis, and the case that the financing is backed by real revenue is in AI Financing Fears Are Overrated.
Demand: is the revenue keeping up
| Cloud business | Quarterly revenue | Growth | Backlog |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | $46.0B | +39% | $578B, up triple digits |
| Microsoft Azure | $33.2B | +48% | Commercial RPO $677B, flat on the quarter |
| Google Cloud | $30.7B | +103% | Not updated on the call |
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | $7.4B | +121% | Total RPO $664B |
| CoreWeave | $2.6B (Apr to Jun) | +112% | $104B |
Growth accelerated at AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and AWS has now sped up for six straight quarters. On the revenue side the build is working. The warning sign is narrower. Microsoft’s backlog held at about $677 billion, still 73% above a year ago, but flat against June, and new bookings fell from a year earlier. The fastest growing line, Google Cloud at 103%, also carries a near-term margin hit as Alphabet rents third-party compute in the December quarter to serve demand it can’t yet host itself.
Guidance: 2026 nearly doubles 2025
| Company | 2025 actual | 2026 guidance midpoint | Change | Spent Jan to Sep 2026 | Implied Q4 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $131.8B | $220B | +67% | $175.7B | About $44B to $48B, depending on measure |
| Alphabet | $91.4B | $200B | +119% | $132.0B | $63B to $73B |
| Microsoft | $118.0B | $175B | +48% | $118.1B | Over $50B guided |
| Meta | $72.2B | $140B | +94% | $85.8B | $49B to $59B |
| Four hyperscalers | $413.4B | $735B | +78% | $511.6B |
Alphabet’s range is the tightest test. To land at $195 billion to $205 billion it needs its biggest quarter yet, $63 billion to $73 billion, against $51.4 billion in September. Meta’s numbers work the same way, a December quarter of $49 billion to $59 billion against $34.9 billion. Alphabet held its range and Meta only lifted the bottom of its own. Both still need a step up just to hit them.
Where the money lands
| Supplier | Latest quarter | Metric | Value | Growth | Next guide or signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nvidia | To Jul 26 | Data center revenue | $89.0B | +117% | Total revenue about $108B, no China data center compute assumed |
| SK hynix | Jul to Sep | Revenue, operating margin 80% | KRW 104.6T (about $78.8B) | +328% | Says DRAM and HBM are effectively sold out to 2029 |
| Micron | To Sep 3 | Revenue, gross margin 87% | $54.2B | +379% | About $61.5B next quarter |
| TSMC | Jul to Sep | Revenue, 68% high-performance computing | $46.7B | +41% | $52.3B to $54.3B; 2026 capex $60B to $64B |
| Broadcom | To Aug 2 | AI semiconductor revenue | $16.7B | +221% | $21.7B next quarter; about $115B in fiscal 2027 |
| Marvell | To Aug 1 | Data center revenue | $2.17B | +46% | Total revenue $3.15B next quarter |
The margins at the bottom of the stack say where the bargaining power sits. SK hynix earned 80 won of operating profit on every 100 won of sales. Micron’s gross margin was 87%. Nvidia’s was 75%. When Microsoft first guided 2026 it said about $25 billion of its $190 billion plan was higher component pricing, and Amazon’s July raise was put down partly to memory costs. So part of the capex growth on the scoreboard is price. A dollar of hyperscaler spending this year delivers fewer gigawatts than it did last year, and the difference shows up as memory makers’ profit.
What to watch in November
| Date | Event | The number that matters |
|---|---|---|
| November 10 | CoreWeave Q3 results | Q3 capex against the $11.5B to $13.5B guide, and whether the $35B to $39B year holds |
| November 17 | Nvidia fiscal Q3 results | Revenue against the $108B guide, and data center growth with no China compute in the outlook |
| Early December | Broadcom fiscal Q4 | AI semiconductor revenue against $21.7B |
| Mid December | Oracle fiscal Q2 and Micron fiscal Q1 | Oracle’s capex pace against $90B to $95B; Micron revenue against about $61.5B |
Bottom line
The AI build is still accelerating, and the way it gets paid for has changed. Five companies spent $237 billion in one quarter, 95% more than a year ago. The four biggest guide to about $735 billion for 2026, up 78%, and every one of them has said 2027 goes higher. Demand is keeping pace on paper: Azure grew 48%, Google Cloud 103% and AWS 39%, with backlogs in the hundreds of billions. But Alphabet, Meta and Oracle now spend more than they earn in operating cash, Amazon’s twelve-month free cash flow is negative $42 billion, and the gap is being filled with bonds, share sales, leases and partner capital. Only Microsoft still funds the build from income, and even its backlog stopped growing this quarter. Meanwhile the suppliers are taking the margin. SK hynix earned 80% operating margins and Micron 87% gross margins, so a growing share of each capex dollar is price rather than capacity. For a decision maker, that sets three priorities. Pricing power sits with the suppliers for as long as spending rises. Balance-sheet risk now sits with the spenders. And the next turn will show first in three places: the January and February guides for 2027, the conversion of backlog into revenue, and the cost of the debt that funds the gap.
Method: capex figures as each company reports them (Microsoft and Meta include finance leases; Amazon is purchases of property and equipment; Oracle and the suppliers use their own fiscal quarters). Guidance midpoints are simple averages of the stated range. The AI Capex Tracker is updated monthly.
