Apple Is Barely Spending on AI While Its Rivals Pour In $700 Billion. Is That Discipline or Denial?
One member of big tech is sitting out the biggest spending boom in corporate history. Its results say more than its budget does.
Overview
There is a spending contest underway in big tech, and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has declined to enter it.
Alphabet lifted its 2026 capital spending plan to a top end of $205 billion last week. Amazon expects to invest about $200 billion this year, Microsoft has pointed to roughly $190 billion, and Meta Platforms plans as much as $145 billion. Together, that's more than $700 billion in a single year, the great majority of it aimed at AI (artificial intelligence) infrastructure.
Details
Apple's capital expenditures in fiscal 2025 were $12.7 billion. In other words, the world's largest consumer technology company is spending a fraction of what those four rivals will spend, combined, while they race to add AI computing capacity.
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.