When Alphabet outlined plans on its fourth quarter earnings call Wednesday (Feb. 4) to invest between $175 billion and $185 billion in capital expenditures during 2026, the range seemed to be less about ambition than necessity. Management framed the commitment during the call with analysts as a direct response to sustained demand for artificial intelligence (AI) compute across consumer products, enterprise platforms and cloud infrastructure. Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told analysts that Alphabet is already operating under capacity pressure. “We’ve been supply constrained even as we’ve been ramping up our capacity,” he said, adding that the company expects to remain constrained through much of 2026 as training, inference and enterprise workloads continue to compound.

Full report : Alphabet resets the bar for AI infrastructure spending with a whopping $185 billion war chest.