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Big tech corporations show no signs of slowing their spending on synthetic intelligence, although the effects still seem a long way off.
By Karen Weise
Karen Weise covers Seattle tech.
Mark Zuckerberg, executive leader of Meta, 2023 by pointing to it as “the year of efficiency”. Like many of its major tech peers, Meta has cut jobs and put its expansion plans on hold.
Then came AI.
Zuckerberg began this year by saying his company would spend more than $30 billion in 2024 on next-generation infrastructure. In April, he increased that amount to $35 billion. On Wednesday, he raised it to at least $37 billion. And he said Meta would spend even more next year.
Zuckerberg said he would build too quickly “too late” and allow his competition to take a big lead in the AI. race.
The tech industry’s biggest corporations made it clear last week that they have no plans to restrict their spending levels on synthetic intelligence, even as investors worry that a big profit will come later than previously thought.
In the last quarter alone, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, spent a combined $59 billion on capital expenditures, up 63% from a year ago and up 161% that 4 years ago. Much of this was spent on construction knowledge centers and integrating new IT systems to expand synthetic intelligence. Only Apple doesn’t spend dramatically more because it rarely builds more complex AI. systems themselves.
Capital spending in the last quarter increased to 63 from last year.
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