Top News

New Delhi: The Government of India presented its annual budget for the financial year 2026–27 on 1 February 2026, in which the total expenditure for the entire country is estimated at around $630–670 billion (about Rs 53.5 lakh crore). This amount will be spent for more than 140 crore people in dozens of areas like defence, education, health, subsidies, infrastructure and welfare schemes. But a surprising revelation has come to light in the technical world.

According to a report, only four big American companies, Amazon, Google (Alphabet), Meta and Microsoft are going to spend a total of about $ 650 billion on AI and infrastructure in 2026. That means an amount equal to or more than the entire annual budget of the Government of India on AI alone!

expenditure figures of companies

These estimates are based on recent announcements of the company. Amazon revealed its biggest plan – capital expenditure (capex) could reach around $200 billion in 2026, which is mainly to increase AI capabilities on the AWS cloud. Alphabet (Google) estimated at $ 175-185 billion, in which cloud and AI infrastructure are prominent.

Meta said the expenditure would be between $115-135 billion, while Microsoft’s estimated capex is around $120 billion. These four companies are investing heavily in things like data centers, high-end servers, networking equipment, specialized AI chips and generators that run everything from chatbots to enterprise tools.

AI race scale

These companies were increasing expenses in previous years too, but the figures for 2026 are unprecedented. According to Bloomberg, this expenditure is the biggest capex boom of this century. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently said that they will make aggressive investments because AI will completely transform the customer experience. He believes that the company which remains ahead in AI will rule the market for a long time. These expenses are more than the GDP of many developed countries, such as Sweden’s 2025 GDP was about 620 billion dollars.

matter of concern for employees

The interesting thing is that these companies are spending billions on AI, but are also making mass layoffs. Amazon recently laid off 16,000 employees and laid off a total of more than 30,000 people in the past months. Companies like Microsoft, Meta are also on the same path. Companies say they are increasing investment in strategic areas (AI), while reducing staff to reduce costs. Analysts say that increasing spending on AI infrastructure may give less priority to human resources. GPUs and servers are becoming more important than humans.