It's bubble or nothing for Google as search giant looks to plow ~$180B into datacenters this year

Google’s parent Alphabet is doubling down on generative AI in 2026. On Wednesday's earnings call, the search and advertising giant boosted its full-year capital expenditures target to between $175 and $185 billion, roughly twice what it spent last year.

The search and ads giant will use that massive pile of cash to build datacenters and buy the kit to fill them, to support its own products and the infrastructure needs of partners like Apple, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Speaking during Alphabet’s earnings call, CFO Anat Ashkenazi said roughly 60 percent of the company's 2026 capex spend, or about $105 to $111 billion, will go toward fast-depreciating assets like servers. The remaining 40 percent, or $70 to $74 billion, will support the construction and networking of new datacenter facilities.

Much of the server spend will go toward the deployment of AI infrastructure, which includes both Google's own ...