Alphabet raised its 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to $195-205bn at its 22 July quarterly results, up from the $180-190bn it set three months earlier. Capital expenditure, or capex, is the money a company commits to physical assets such as servers, buildings and networking gear. Google Cloud revenue grew 82% to $24.8bn, and management put 60% of the extra spend into servers, 40% into data centres and networking.1
Alphabet was the only one of the four big US hyperscalers to report inside this fortnight; Microsoft and Meta file on 29 July, Amazon on 30 July, so their figures are not yet on the record. The server-weighted split matters. Money flowing to chips rather than empty shells means the power demand arrives sooner than the construction calendar implies.
That demand already shows in the connection queues. ERCOT's Texas interconnection backlog passed 438 GW in June, roughly five times the state's peak demand and overwhelmingly data centres. Alphabet's shares fell more than 4% on the raise, the market pricing scepticism about when AI infrastructure pays back; the physical read here is simpler, that the money is buying hardware someone must find the power to run.
