Microsoft said it will devote more than $100 billion to artificial-intelligence and data-center projects in its 2026 fiscal year, a 14 % increase over the prior period and the largest capital-expenditure plan in the company’s history. The announcement followed fiscal-fourth-quarter results that beat expectations, with revenue climbing 18 % to $76.4 billion and Azure annual sales surpassing $75 billion. The pledge intensifies an investment race among U.S. hyperscalers. Morgan Stanley estimates Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta will pour about $400 billion into AI-related spending next year and as much as $2.9 trillion by 2028. Meta, which reported a 22 % jump in quarterly revenue to $47.5 billion, said it will lift 2025 capital outlays above this year’s already record $66-$72 billion range as it builds multi-gigawatt data centers for generative-AI workloads. Wall Street has so far rewarded the outlays. Microsoft briefly topped the $4 trillion valuation threshold last week, while Meta’s post-earnings rally pushed its market capitalization beyond $2 trillion. Nvidia, the main supplier of AI chips, leads the market at $4.2 trillion and is on pace for roughly $156 billion in annual datacenter sales. Economists calculate that AI infrastructure spending is now large enough—about 2 % of U.S. GDP—to offset weakness elsewhere in the economy, underscoring how the sector’s expansion is shaping broader growth.