Democracy Dies in Darkness

Big Tech keeps spending billions on AI. There’s no end in sight.

Much of the money is going to new data centers, which are predicted to place huge demands on the U.S. power grid

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April 25, 2024 at 7:21 p.m. EDT
Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speak to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a Senate forum on AI in September. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
4 min

SAN FRANCISCO — The biggest tech companies in the world have spent billions of dollars on the artificial intelligence revolution. Now they’re planning to spend tens of billions more, pushing up demand for computer chips and potentially adding new strain to the U.S. electrical grid.

In quarterly earnings calls this week, Google, Microsoft and Meta all underlined just how big their investments in AI are. On Wednesday, Meta raised its predictions for how much it will spend this year by up to $10 billion. Google plans to spend around $12 billion or more each quarter this year on capital expenditures, much of which will be for new data centers, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said Thursday. Microsoft spent $14 billion in the most recent quarter and expects that to keep increasing “materially,” Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said.