Morgan Stanley has sharply raised its outlook for global cloud capital spending, projecting a 56% year-on-year jump in 2025 to about $445 billion. The bank’s previous forecast envisaged 44% growth, but second-quarter earnings calls from the major hyperscalers signalled even more aggressive investment plans for artificial-intelligence infrastructure. Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Amazon are expected to contribute 77% of next year’s outlays, Morgan Stanley said. Looking further ahead, the firm forecasts cloud capex will increase another 31% in 2026 to roughly $582 billion, pushing the sector’s capex-to-revenue ratio to a record 21.6% as companies race to build data-center capacity for generative-AI workloads. The revised projections follow a year in which the four companies together booked about $120 billion in depreciation and amortization, underscoring the scale of assets already in place. Separate industry estimates suggest their cumulative capital spending could approach $600 billion by 2030, highlighting the durability of the investment cycle.