GuShiio.com ① US technology giants Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta plan to invest US$320 billion in AI technology and data center construction in 2025, an increase from US$230 billion in 2024;
② The release of DeepSeek is unlikely to have an impact on AI investment plans in the short term.
Financial Union, February 9 (Editor Niu Zhanlin)Although DeepSeek has caused huge waves in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), raising questions about huge capital expenditures, American technology giants have chosen to continue to increase their AI and sent a clear message: The AI craze will not fade in 2025.
Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta have recently stated that after record spending last year, they will further increase investment in 2025, with an expected investment of a total of US$320 billion in AI technology and data center construction. In comparison, the total capital expenditure of the Big Four in 2024 will be US$230 billion.
Faced with the impact of DeepSeek, corporate executives and Wall Street analysts said that DeepSeek’s release is unlikely to have an impact on AI investment plans in the short term. However, in the long run, whether large-scale investment in data centers is indeed a problem.
DeepSeek researchers claim that its AI model performs better than OpenAI, but the build cost is only a fraction of OpenAI. That surprised investors in particular, but executives from U.S. companies did not flinch, touting their own technological advances and arguing that cost reductions would make AI more affordable and increase demand for their cloud computing services, which AI requires to run.
Faced with the emergence of DeepSeek, so far, American technology giants have not changed their plans to make huge investments in AI development.
the biggest opportunity
Among them, Amazon proposed the most ambitious spending plan of the four companies, claiming that its total capital expenditures on all businesses this year are expected to increase to more than $100 billion, and said most of the increase will be for AI, up from $83 billion in 2024.
Amazon CEO Andy Jasi said during an earnings conference call on Thursday that the money will be used mainly for AI and “once-in-a-lifetime business opportunities” in Amazon’s Web Services division.
“I think in the medium to long term, our business, our customers and shareholders will be happy because we are pursuing capital opportunities and business opportunities in the AI space,” he claimed.
Jasi pointed out that AI has the potential to drive historic change, and Amazon hopes to be a leader in this change. “AI undoubtedly represents the biggest opportunity since cloud computing, and may be the biggest technological change and opportunity in the business world since the Internet.”
Last month, Microsoft said it plans to invest $80 billion in AI data centers in fiscal 2025, and that spending will grow further next year, although the growth rate will slow.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that more than half of the spending will take place in the United States and AI will be used more widely, which he believes is good news.
Google parent company Alphabet said it is accelerating investment in AI data centers, with capital expenditures expected to increase to approximately $75 billion this year from $52.5 billion in 2024 and expected to reach $16 billion to $18 billion in the first quarter.
Anat Ashkenazi, chief financial officer of Alphabet, said this week that most of the spending will be spent on “AI infrastructure, mainly servers, and to a lesser extent data centers and networks.”
At the same time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has set an AI investment budget of US$60 billion to US$65 billion, calling 2025 a “decisive year for artificial intelligence.”
“I still believe that making large-scale investments… will be a strategic advantage in the long run, and this will help unleash historic innovations and expand America’s technological leadership,” Zuckerberg said.
In addition, companies including SoftBank, Oracle and OpenAI have committed to spending $500 billion to build new AI infrastructure in a joint venture called Stargate.
OpenAI announced on Thursday that it is evaluating which areas of the United States are suitable for data center locations for the Stargate project and has more than $100 billion in funding ready.
