Alphabet raises CapEx guidance to $205B as AI spending race accelerates

Alphabet just told investors to expect it to spend more, a lot more. On July 22, 2026, the Google parent raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to between $195 billion and $205 billion, up from the prior range of $180 to $190 billion. That $15 billion revision upward is not a rounding error. It is roughly the market cap of a mid-sized bank. The revised figure represents nearly double what Alphabet spent on infrastructure in 2025. What Alphabet is actually buying The spending breaks down in ways that tell you something about where the real AI arms race is happening. Roughly half of the CapEx is allocated to servers, with around 40% directed at data centers and networking equipment. Part of that buildout includes a data center project in Jackson County, Alabama, slated for completion between 2026 and 2027. That project alone is valued at $1.5 billion, which gives a sense of how many facilities Alphabet must be planning when the total bill runs into the hundreds of billions. The funding for all this did not appear from thin air. In June 2026, Alphabet executed an equity raise of $84.75 billion, specifically earmarked for AI infrastructure. The revenue case behind the spendi...