AI Capex Spending of Up to $828 Billion Wipes $1 Trillion From Nasdaq 100 Market Value

Four of the largest hyperscalers — Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta — along with Elon Musk's SpaceX including xAI, disclosed capital expenditure plans of as much as $828 billion for 2026, a bill that helped erase more than $1 trillion in market value from Nasdaq 100 companies on Friday. The outlay includes up to $220 billion from Amazon, $205 billion from Alphabet, $170 billion from Microsoft, $145 billion from Meta and $88 billion from SpaceX. The Nasdaq fell 2.9% and the S&P 500 dropped 1.8%, their worst one-day performances since June, with weak Intel guidance also weighing on sentiment. Four of the five companies posted negative free cash flow in the third quarter — Microsoft was the exception. Microsoft announced a $25 billion bond offering, its first in more than nine years, while Meta reported negative free cash flow of $2.1 billion and plans to raise up to $95 billion. Amazon recorded negative free cash flow of more than $42 billion over the past year. Cloud growth offered some reassurance: Google's cloud revenue more than doubled, Azure grew 48% and AWS expanded about 39%.