Big Tech on Track to Pour More Than $180B into Data Centers This Year

Big tech companies are on pace to pour more than $180 billion into data center expansions and related infrastructure costs, according to Dell’Oro Group. The market research firm shared its analysis of data center capital expenditures with CIO Dive ahead of a December report.

Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft together increased infrastructure investments by 81% year over year during the third quarter of 2024, the firm estimated.

The building boom was fueled by AI model training, the primary focus of data center investments this year, Dell’Oro Group Senior Research Director Baron Fung said.

AWS, Azure and Google Cloud each reported major year-over-year spikes in capital expenditures and AI revenues in Q3 and forecast more of the same in the coming months.

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Cloud providers invested in AI-optimized infrastructure to supply model builders with compute and prepare for an even larger wave of processing demand. The three largest public cloud providers – AWS, Azure and Google Cloud – accounted for roughly 80% of Q3 spending, Dell’Oro Group found.

While AI chipmaker Nvidia saw revenues nearly double year over year in the three-month period ending Oct. 27, the market for traditional central processing has picked up, too. CPU, memory and storage vendor revenues increased more than 90% in Q3, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, according to Dell’Oro Group. 

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