Nvidia CFO: Cloud industry backlog exceeds $2T, capex to hit $1.3T in 2027

The AI infrastructure gold rush just got a price tag. During Nvidia’s Q1 FY2027 earnings call on May 20, 2026, CFO Colette Kress disclosed that aggregate backlogs across major cloud providers have climbed to roughly $2 trillion, representing multi-year contracts that hyperscalers have already committed to fulfilling. Hyperscaler capital expenditure is forecast to reach $800 billion in 2026 and $1.3 trillion in 2027. The numbers behind the supercycle Kress pegged 2026 hyperscaler capex at somewhere between $650 billion and $775 billion, with some projections pushing above $800 billion once all providers are included. The 2027 number, at $1.3 trillion, would represent a spending level the industry has never approached before. These commitments reflect contractually committed backlogs at Microsoft, Amazon, Google Cloud, and Oracle, all of which have locked in infrastructure deals to meet surging customer demand for AI compute. AI infrastructure spending is projected to reach between $3 trillion and $4 trillion annually by the end of the decade. Nvidia itself is the clearest evidence that this spending is real and accelerating. The company recorded $81.6 billion in revenue for Q1 FY202...