Investment Thought Piece

As part of results announcements in the last fortnight, the four dominant US ‘hyperscalers’ (Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon) have entered the largest capital spending cycle in the history of technology with a collective capex plan of ~$650 billion for 2026! Individually, each management team can justify its spending. Collectively, however, these spending trajectories resemble something very close to a Prisoner’s Dilemma.