Some of the world's top technology companies have already invested billions of dollars in the AI revolution. Now, they plan to invest hundreds of billions more.
During this week's quarterly earnings conference calls, Meta, Google, and Microsoft all emphasized their investment scale in AI. On Wednesday, Meta raised its capital expenditure forecast for the year by $10 billion, increasing it to $35 billion to $40 billion for the full year. On Thursday, Google's CFO Ruth Porat stated that the company will spend around $12 billion or more on capital expenditures each quarter this year, with most of it going towards building new data centers. Microsoft's CFO Amy Hood mentioned that the company's capital expenditure for the most recent quarter was $14 billion and is expected to continue to increase significantly.
Based on the quarterly performance and forecasts of large technology companies in this financial reporting season, a company looking to be a player in the AI field must spend $10 billion in capital expenditures each quarter.
However, Meta's significant increase in expected AI spending has spooked the market, leading to a single-day stock price drop of 10.56%. But Mark Zuckerberg defended the AI investment frenzy during Meta's earnings call, vowing to increase spending to make Meta &#34;the world's leading artificial intelligence company.&#34; Zuckerberg stated that he believes Meta &#34;should significantly increase investment over the next few years to build more advanced models and the world's largest AI services.&#34; He added that these expenditures must &#34;grow meaningfully&#34; before they generate significant revenue from these new products.
Google's Porat stated during the conference call: &#34;We are very committed to making the necessary investments to maintain our leadership position.&#34; Google CEO Sundar Pichai added, &#34;This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.&#34;
In fact, even before OpenAI released ChatGPT in the second half of 2022, tech giants had been steadily increasing their R&amp;D investment in AI. However, the success of ChatGPT prompted large tech companies to suddenly increase their capital expenditures. Venture capitalists have also flooded into the field, allowing startups with few employees to raise hundreds of millions of dollars solely by building their own AI tools.
According to a recent disclosure from an informed source cited by the media, Musk's AI startup X.AI is about to reach a $6 billion agreement in a funding round, valuing the company at $18 billion. The source mentioned that investors such as Sequoia Capital will participate in this funding round

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Google, Microsoft, and Meta, the three tech giants, summarized in a conference call: "Aggressive spending" is extremely determined!