{"id":23409,"date":"2026-02-06T13:51:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T11:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/amazon-shares-sink-as-big-techs-ai-spending-plans-worry-investors\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:34:13","slug":"amazon-shares-sink-as-big-techs-ai-spending-plans-worry-investors","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/amazon-shares-sink-as-big-techs-ai-spending-plans-worry-investors\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon shares sink as Big Tech&#8217;s AI spending plans worry investors"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Massive AI spending by companies, estimated to be more than $600 billion this year, have raised doubts among investors over the prospects of immediate returns from the huge capital outlays.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">They also fear that rapidly improving AI tools could eat into demand for traditional software, squeezing profit margins, resulting in a broader selloff across the tech sector.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Amazon&#8217;s capex spending plans are expected to reach $200 billion in 2026. Alphabet\u00a0 said its capex could double from a year ago, while Meta and Microsoft\u00a0 has ramped up their spending plans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">&#8220;While the rising capital intensity is not a surprise directionally, the magnitude of the spend is materially greater than consensus expected,&#8221; Moffett Nathanson analysts said in a note.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">In contrast to Alphabet&#8217;s confident tone on its spending plans, Amazon Chief Executive Officer, Andy Jassy struck a defensive note during the post-earnings investor call.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">&#8220;As a reminder,&#8221; said Jassy, referring to the results of cloud platform Amazon Web Services, &#8220;it&#8217;s very different having 24% year-over-year growth on $142 billion annualized run rate, than to have a higher-percentage growth on a meaningfully smaller base, which is the case with our competitors.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">AWS revenue grew to $35.6 billion in the December quarter, while Google Cloud grew 48% to $17.75 billion. Microsoft&#8217;s Azure surged 39% in the same period.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20547,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-23409","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Amazon shares dropped 8% in premarket trading on Friday after the company's hefty capital expenditure plans deepened investor worries over Big Tech's spending spree on artificial intelligence","published_date":"2026-02-06 00:00:00","news_description":"Amazon shares dropped 8% in premarket trading on Friday after the company's hefty capital expenditure plans deepened investor worries over Big Tech's spending spree on artificial intelligence","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26386,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23409\/revisions\/26386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}