Big Tech Capex Hits $725B — and $25B of It Is Just Memory Inflation

Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are on track for roughly $725 billion of combined 2026 capital spending, up around 77% on last year. The uncomfortable detail is how much of that increase buys nothing new. Microsoft CFO Amy Hood attributed about $25 billion of the company’s $190 billion budget directly to higher memory and component prices. Meta raised its full-year range citing the same cause, naming memory specifically alongside land and power. Component inflation is now large enough to appear in hyperscaler guidance as a named line — which means record capex figures no longer map cleanly to record capacity.