It seems the AI boom has shifted up another gear. Citi reckons the surge in announcements from big tech firms over the past fortnight, covering new partnerships, product launches and spending plans, marks a step change in the race to build the digital plumbing behind artificial intelligence.
The bank has lifted its forecasts for AI-related capital spending by the so-called hyperscalers, the likes of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google, to $490 billion in 2026, up from a previous $420 billion.
Looking further out, Citi now expects total spend to hit $2.8 trillion by 2029, half a trillion dollars more than it had projected before.
That wall of money will not just go into servers and data centres.
The beneficiaries stretch across the supply chain, from semiconductor makers and networking firms to hardware and infrastructure providers.
Citi notes that much of this investment is being pushed through even before enterprise demand for AI is fully visible, a sign of how keen hyperscalers are to stay ahead of the curve.
For UK investors, the implications are clear enough. The rally in US-listed chipmakers has grabbed the headlines, but London-listed firms with exposure to data centre build-out, whether in power equipment, cooling technology or specialist engineering, are likely to see more interest as the spending cycle gathers pace.
This is, after all, the information era’s latest land grab.