Big companies will spend a total of $344 billion this year

Animal fear is driving companies to spend tens of billions of dollars on developing their own artificial intelligence. This tech arms race is a perfect illustration of trying to jump on a train that has already left the station.

Microsoft, which spent $24.2 billion on its Copilot last quarter alone, plans to add another $30 billion this quarter. Amazon spent $31.4 billion in the same period and plans to keep up the pace. Google has raised its forecast for AI spending this year to $85 billion. Meta closes the parade of wastefulness, its expenses are currently unknown, but it is known that the management has reviewed plans and agreed on a significant increase in spending.

OpenAI and Apple are working on AI but do not spend so much money. The smaller OpenAI spends less because it simply cannot afford such large expenditures. Its recent contract with Oracle for $30 billion per year, not quarter, looks modest. It is not clear how much Apple is spending, but the company's board of directors is clearly not happy with the pace of development of this technology.

While the niche is being formed, all companies are trying to grab the biggest piece. Everyone is well aware that it is easier and cheaper to occupy a niche now than to take it away from more robust competitors later.

This leads to the phenomenon of spending truly cosmic amounts of money on new technology. For example, with this money, companies could launch 700,000 (!) Srarlink satellites in a year, or put a man on the moon twice. keep in mind that companies would not spend this kind of money if they did not want to get it back with interest. Some have lost or will soon lose their jobs, and some may soon see their tariff plans go up.