Major hyperscalers like Alphabet and Meta boosted their capex forecasts alongside their latest earnings reports, once again surpassing Wall Street’s already lofty expectations.

For much of the year, sell-side analysts have been playing catch-up, repeatedly raising their AI infrastructure spending projections with each new company update. Following this latest round of upward revisions, consensus capex forecasts for 2026 now stand at ~$518 billion, up 29% year-over-year - and an astonishing 65% above what analysts had expected at the beginning of the year.

These new spending plans underscore not only the sustained momentum behind the AI buildout, but also how much investors and analysts may still be underestimating the true scale and staying power of the overall AI investment cycle.