Who is funding AI data centers?

Microsoft's audited additions to property and equipment rose from $44,477 million in FY2024 to $64,551 million in FY2025 and $115,948 million in FY2026, with finance leases used heavily for large third-party datacenter shells. In July 2026 it moved to 25-year lease treatment and guided to $175 billion of reported capex for calendar 2026, below its prior $190 billion estimate, framed as accounting-driven rather than demand-driven. Its flagship North American commitment is more than $7 billion in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, alongside sites in Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Virginia and Washington. Microsoft is also the most heavily documented case of capacity pull-back, with up to about 2 GW of leases and LOIs cancelled or deferred per TD Cowen, about 1.5 GW of self-build frozen per SemiAnalysis, and a $1 billion Ohio project paused.

Amazon's purchases of property and equipment were $82,999 million in 2024 and $131,819 million in 2025, with net cash capex of $77.7 billion and $128.3 billion respectively, primarily supporting AWS growth. Guidance escalated three times inside eighteen months, from $100 billion for 2025 to $200 billion and then $220 billion for 2026. Announced North American commitments include $11 billion plus an additional $15 billion in Indiana, at least $20 billion in Pennsylvania, more than $23 billion forecast in Ohio by 2030, and $10 billion for two Mississippi complexes plus a further $3 billion Vicksburg campus. AWS builds are overwhelmingly balance-sheet funded, with power procured contractually, including a 1,920 MW nuclear PPA with Talen Energy through 2042.

Alphabet's audited purchases of property and equipment were $52,535 million in 2024 and $91,447 million in 2025, with comparatively small finance-lease additions, indicating Google self-builds and owns far more of its fleet than Microsoft leases. 2026 capex guidance was raised twice, from $175-185 billion to $195-205 billion, after a record $44.9 billion quarter that produced Alphabet's first cash-negative quarter since its 2004 IPO. Unlike peers, Alphabet began tapping equity markets, raising $49.6 billion net in June 2026 partly for capex, and agreed to acquire data center company Intersect for $4.75 billion. Major announced North American commitments include $40 billion in Texas through 2027, $9 billion in South Carolina, and $7 billion in Iowa.

Meta's capital expenditures including principal payments on finance leases were $72.22 billion for full-year 2025, with 2026 guidance moving from $115-135 billion to as much as $145 billion and then narrowed to $130-145 billion. Its flagship is the Hyperion campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana, which grew from a $10 billion announcement to a $27 billion Blue Owl joint venture and by mid-2026 to a 5 GW facility costing more than $50 billion. Meta repeated the private-credit JV playbook with BlackRock at El Paso, a roughly $14 billion venture with a $12.5 billion debt financing and residual value guarantees. No 2025-2026 Meta cancellation of a North American AI campus was confirmed; documented pauses trace to the late-2022 design-rescope cycle.

Oracle's capex inflected from $21.2 billion in fiscal 2025 to $55.7 billion in fiscal 2026 (fiscal years end 31 May), funded unlike peers with debt and hybrid capital, including $42.7 billion of senior notes and $5.0 billion of mandatory convertible preferred stock in FY2026, with about $40 billion more planned for fiscal 2027 against a record $638 billion backlog. Oracle is an initial equity funder in Stargate and holds an OpenAI partnership exceeding $300 billion over five years to develop 4.5 GW of additional capacity. Its Saline Township, Michigan campus produced a $16.3 billion financing, the largest single-facility technology debt package on record, part of $72 billion in partner debt across four states. The Abilene, Texas flagship's expansion from 1.2 GW to 2 GW was dropped.

Apple is the outlier: a very large US commitment with essentially no owned hyperscale data center capacity disclosed. It announced on 24 February 2025 that it will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, including a Houston AI server factory and 20,000 R&D jobs; the commitment was subsequently raised by $100 billion, and Apple now references a $600 billion commitment. The Houston Advanced Manufacturing Center, opened 13 August 2026, is a server manufacturing plant, not a data center; Apple discloses no MW figure, no site-level data center capex, and no PPA structure in the fetched sources.