Stratechery Week in Review: Big Tech Q1 2026 'Earning & Spending' — $300B+ Combined AI Capex Commitments Reshape the Landscape
Stratechery·medium signal
Ben Thompson's weekly roundup synthesizes Big Tech's Q1 2026 earnings through the lens of AI capital allocation. Meta's $115-135B AI capex (nearly 2x 2025), Google's $40B Anthropic commitment, Nvidia's $40B equity bets, and Cloudflare's AI-first restructuring form a picture of an industry spending at unprecedented scale. The question Thompson raises: are these investments or arms races?