AI spending is still in overdrive

The tab keeps getting bigger

If you thought the AI spending boom was cooling off, think again. Hyperscalers are now on pace to spend more than $700 billion this year, which would mark a 74% jump from last year. That’s not a typo — that’s a giant pile of cash aimed at keeping the AI arms race moving.

Backlogs that look like a phone number

The article also says the combined first-quarter backlog across Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft has topped $1.4 trillion. Translation: the demand line is still stretched out, and these companies have plenty of customers waiting for compute, cloud capacity, and all the gear that makes AI go brrrr.

Why investors should care

This matters because big hyperscaler spending tends to ripple outward:

• chipmakers get more orders
• networking and power infrastructure suppliers stay busy
• cloud and software rivals have to keep up or risk getting left behind

Big picture: the AI buildout is still behaving less like a trend and more like a massive infrastructure project with no end date in sight.