Tech giants have spent more on AI than the US government has on education, jobs and social services in 2025 so far
Tech giants have spent more on AI than the US government has on education, jobs and social services in 2025 so far
The US’s largest companies have spent 2025 locked in a competition to spend more money than one another, lavishing $155bn on the development of artificial intelligence, more than the US government has spent on education, training, employment and social services in the 2025 fiscal year so far.
Based on the most recent financial disclosures of Silicon Valley’s biggest players, the race is about to accelerate to hundreds of billions in a single year.
Over the past two weeks, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, Google’s parent, have shared their quarterly public financial reports. Each disclosed that their year-to-date capital expenditure, a figure that refers to the money companies spend to acquire or upgrade tangible assets, already totals tens of billions.
Capex, as the term is abbreviated, is a proxy for technology companies’ spending on AI because the technology requires gargantuan investments in physical infrastructure, namely data centers, which require large amounts of power, water and expensive semiconductor chips. Google said during its most recent earnings call that its capital expenditure “primarily reflects investments in servers and data centers to support AI”.
Meta’s year-to-date capital expenditure amounted to $30.7bn, doubling the $15.2bn figure from the same time last year, per its earnings report.
