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Analysis

The Memory Bill in the Capex Prints

Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon report this week, and each has said it will spend more. The record since July says a larger capex figure no longer means a larger build: the one raise with a stated cause was the price of memory, and the one cut was accounting.

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Coverage intelligence, not investment advice — methodology.
The Memory Bill in the Capex Prints
The card this piece shares as. Coverage data from TEXXR; fundamentals from SEC filings.

What they said in July

Microsoft and Alphabet report on Wednesday 28 October and Amazon on Thursday. Meta went first, on 21 October. Each guided capital spending last quarter in its own terms:

Company 2026 capex, last guided Before that On 2027
Alphabet, 22 July $195–205B $180–190B “increase significantly”
Microsoft, 29 July about $175B, calendar 2026 $190B, before a lease accounting change the year to June 2027 “will grow”
Amazon, 30 July about $220B, cash capex about $200B still short of capacity in 2027; no figure
Meta, 21 October $135–145B, with finance-lease principal $130–145B “continue investing aggressively”; budget not set

Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon each said demand exceeds what they can supply. What has changed since is what the dollar figure measures.

Price and accounting, not plans

Amazon gave a cause for its raise. “The higher cost of memory pushing this number up from our prior estimate of about $200 billion,” Andy Jassy said on the call. He gave no other cause for the $20 billion. He added that “at this level of spend,” Amazon will “still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026.”

Microsoft cut its figure without cutting its plans. Amy Hood said its calendar 2026 investment expectations “remain unchanged”, but more future data-centre leases would move from finance leases to operating leases, and “finance leases are included in capital expenditures while operating leases are not.” That shift alone took the forecast from $190 billion to about $175 billion, by Reuters’ account. Her $41 billion for the June quarter included “the impact from higher component pricing.”

The four do not count alike. Meta includes principal paid on finance leases; Amazon guides cash capex; Microsoft will leave more of its leasing out. A sum of the four adds unlike things.

The price has kept rising since. In October Micron reported a 90% gross margin in its data-centre DRAM unit, against 41% a year earlier, and its chief executive said: “We see greater tightness in the industry in 2027 and in 2028 versus 2026.” Any 2027 figure given this week will carry that price.

11 of 12
Revisions to the four companies' annual capex guidance in TEXXR's headlines since April 2024 that raised the figure or its floor
Two logged in 2024, four in 2025, six in 2026 so far. The twelfth, Microsoft's in July, cut $15B on an accounting change with plans unchanged. The record holds no headline for Amazon's July raise to about $220B, the one the company tied to memory.

The one revision in the period whose stated cause was price never made a headline in that record.

The money that followed memory

The funds had already moved toward memory. In the second quarter, by their 30 June 13F filings, which we read across eighteen of them, nine of the twelve AI-heavy funds holding Nvidia cut or sold out, and none added more than 5%. Their largest net addition was Micron, at $8.96 billion; SanDisk drew $2.90 billion. A 13F gives holdings at the quarter’s end, not when the trades were made.

In July the memory makers’ shares fell hard, in the same weeks the buyers said memory cost more. On 16 July SanDisk closed down 12.63% and Micron 5.65%. On 28 July Korea’s index fell 11%, SK Hynix 12%, on worry over China’s chipmakers and the AI spending boom. The next day SK Hynix missed estimates. From 30 June to 29 July, Micron fell from $1,154.29 to $739.00, or 36.0%, and SanDisk from $2,273.73 to $1,015.89, or 55.3%. Nvidia fell 5.0%. Micron rose 18% on 30 July, after Microsoft’s print. At Monday’s close it stood at $903.70, 21.7% below 30 June; Nvidia, at $216.00, was 8.0% above.

So the price of memory rose while the shares of the firms selling it fell. The reason Bloomberg gave for Korea’s fall was doubt about the spending, not about the price. How long the spending lasts is the question this week’s figures bear on.

The tenant behind the backlog

The demand they cite now has a public name and a filed contract. Anthropic’s S-1 commits it to spend at least $114.5 billion with Google through July 2033, $110.0 billion with Amazon through April 2036 and $44.9 billion with Microsoft through May 2033, “regardless of actual usage.” Its own purchases of property and equipment in the first half of 2026 were $482 million. The hyperscalers build; Anthropic rents.

Those sums equal about 22% of Google Cloud’s $513.9 billion backlog and of the $496 billion of AWS-led commitments Amazon reported at 30 June. The S-1 does not say how much of either backlog its contracts make up. Its third-quarter revenue grew by fewer dollars than its second, as our Anthropic page sets out. On 25 October Jassy said AWS capacity for 2027 is “largely sold out.”

The capital sink argues that spending has outrun free cash flow. The memory bill sharpens that: a dollar that buys dearer memory buys less capacity, and the return on it has to come from the same customers.

Questions the record raises

  • How much of any raise is price? Amazon put the whole of July’s raise on memory. Does any of the three split a new figure into volume and price?
  • What do the units say? Satya Nadella said Microsoft added “another gigawatt” in the quarter and aims to “roughly double” capacity in two years. Jassy said Amazon expects double its 2025 power capacity by the end of 2027. If dollars rise and those targets do not, the gap is price.
  • What is Microsoft’s figure with leases put back? The cut moved spending into operating leases. The 10-Q’s lease note is where that shows.
  • Does 2027 get a number? Alphabet has said “significantly” since April. A figure would show what memory price it assumes.
  • How much backlog is one customer? Neither Google nor Amazon has said what share of its backlog Anthropic’s contracts make up.

Sources

Dates are the publisher’s where the page shows one, otherwise TEXXR’s.

  • Alphabet Inc., Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, SEC filing, 2026-07-23. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426000071/goog-20260630.htm
  • Alphabet second-quarter 2026 earnings call, 2026-07-22, transcript at AllMind.
  • Bloomberg, Google lifts 2026 capex to $205B, 2026-07-22. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1173508
  • CNBC, Alphabet raises 2026 capex guidance, 2026-04-29. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1168001
  • Microsoft fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 earnings call, 2026-07-29, transcript at the Motley Fool.
  • Reuters, Microsoft’s accounting change lowers capex forecast, 2026-07-29. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1173960
  • Amazon.com, Inc., second-quarter 2026 results (Exhibit 99.1) and Form 10-Q, SEC filings, 2026-07-30 and 2026-07-31. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000024/amzn-20260630xex991.htm · https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000026/amzn-20260630.htm
  • Amazon second-quarter 2026 earnings call, 2026-07-30, transcript at Webull.
  • Meta Platforms, Inc., second- and third-quarter 2026 results (Exhibit 99.1), SEC filings, 2026-07-29 and 2026-10-21. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000162828026050596/meta-06302026xexhibit991.htm · https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000162828026066700/meta-09302026xexhibit991.htm
  • Reuters, Meta narrows its capex forecast, 2026-07-29. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1173964
  • Bloomberg, Meta raises its spending outlook, 2026-10-21. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1297529
  • Anthropic, PBC, Form S-1 registration statement, SEC filing, 2026-10-26. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2130357/000162828026067168/anthropicpbc-sx1.htm
  • The Information, Jassy: AWS 2027 capacity largely sold, 2026-10-25. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1297743
  • Bloomberg, AI spending fears before earnings, 2026-10-25. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1297781
  • Financial Times, Memory and storage stocks fall, 2026-07-16. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1173141
  • Bloomberg, Korean stocks sink as chipmakers plunge, 2026-07-28. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1173805
  • CNBC, SK Hynix second-quarter results, 2026-07-29. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1173885
  • CNBC, Chip stocks rally after Microsoft, 2026-07-30. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1174064
  • The Register, Micron says RAM supply will worsen, 2026-10-01. TEXXR: https://texxr.com/1296086
  • 13F filings for the periods ended 31 March and 30 June 2026 from 18 AI-heavy funds, read by DeadRisk; Nvidia’s and Alphabet’s own 13Fs set aside.
  • Our archive of as-traded closes for Micron, SanDisk and Nvidia, 30 June to 26 October 2026.
  • TEXXR’s record of headlines on the four companies’ capex guidance, searched 2026-10-27 under “capex”, “capital expenditures”, “capital spending” and “AI spending”: twelve revisions from April 2024 to 22 October 2026 (Meta seven, Alphabet three, Amazon one, Microsoft one), and none for Amazon’s July 2026 raise.

Disclosure: this piece was drafted with Claude, a model made by Anthropic. Anthropic’s filing is discussed here.