According to the latest report by the Financial Times, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta plan to invest a total of $725 billion in the field of artificial intelligence in 2026, representing a 77% increase from last year's record high of $410 billion, and significantly higher than the previously estimated $610 billion in February this year. Just in the first quarter of 2026, the capital expenditures of these four giants have already reached $130 billion, indicating that the competition for AI infrastructure is heating up dramatically.

Specific financial data shows that the investments of major vendors have all doubled: Microsoft's expenditure is expected to reach $190 billion, with an increase of as much as 192.3%, leading the industry; Alphabet (Google's parent company) and Meta's investments have also exceeded $145 billion and $190 billion respectively, with increases exceeding 100%; Amazon plans to invest more than $200 billion. Although Google's cloud computing business saw a 63% growth in revenue in the latest quarter, showing strong performance, cost pressures have also surged due to rising prices of memory chips and core components. Both Google and Microsoft have publicly stated that their current computing capacity is still far from meeting the explosive demand for AI.

Regarding the huge spending, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has clearly hinted at a shift in pricing logic: the software billing model is moving from the traditional fixed "per-seat" model to a hybrid model of "seat fee plus usage fee." This means that as AI computing costs are passed on to end users, B-end customers will face higher billing costs. Industry analysts believe that this change in billing model is not only a necessary choice for major players to recoup their AI investment costs but will also reshape the commercial competition rules of the entire enterprise software market.