Apple spends minimally on AI as rivals invest $700B, and crypto investors should be paying attention

Apple’s planned capital expenditures for 2026 land somewhere around $13 to $14 billion. That sounds like a lot of money until you realize Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are collectively expected to spend between $650 and $700 billion on AI-related infrastructure in the same period. The gap is staggering. Apple’s rivals are outspending it by roughly 50-to-1 on the infrastructure buildout. And yet Apple is sitting on more than $130 billion in cash reserves, having returned $104.7 billion to shareholders in fiscal year 2025 alone. This isn’t a company that can’t afford to spend. It’s a company that’s choosing not to. The partnership play over the infrastructure play Rather than constructing massive data center empires, Apple has opted for a different playbook. In January 2026, the company announced a multi-year collaboration with Google to leverage its Gemini AI technology for future developments, including upgrades to Siri and other product capabilities. The deal is reportedly worth about $1 billion annually. This Google partnership follows Apple’s earlier collaboration with OpenAI, which kicked off in 2024. The pattern is clear: Apple would rather rent AI capability from part...