"DeepSeek Moment" cannot shake the determination of giant capital expenditures, American technology giants are still investing billions of dollars in the field of AI.

US tech giants plan to spend billions of dollars to build their artificial intelligence infrastructure, in contrast to the cost-saving economy of the AI model of Chinese startup DeepSeek. US companies including Alphabet (GOOGL.US), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US), Meta Platforms (META.US), and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) have already invested billions in the last quarter and plan to do so in 2025. Alphabet Inc. Class C and Amazon.com, Inc., both set to release quarterly earnings earlier this week, have big ambitions for artificial intelligence. Alphabet plans to invest around $75 billion in 2025. The company's CFO, Anath Ashkenazi, stated that in the fourth quarter of 2024, Alphabet's capital expenditure (CapEx) was $14 billion, mainly reflecting investments in technology infrastructure, with the largest portion going towards servers, followed by data centers to support growth in Alphabet Inc. Class C Services, Alphabet Inc. Class C Cloud, and Alphabet Inc. Class C DeepMind. Ashkenazi said in the company's earnings call, "As we expand our efforts in artificial intelligence, we expect to increase capital expenditure investments in technology infrastructure, primarily servers, followed by data centers and networking. We expect to invest around $75 billion in capital expenditure by 2025, with first-quarter debt ranging from $16 to $18 billion." Meanwhile, Amazon.com, Inc. had a capital expenditure of $26.3 billion in the fourth quarter, and the full-year capital expenditure for 2025 could reach around $100 billion. Amazon.com, Inc. CEO Andy Jassy said in the earnings call, "Our fourth-quarter capital expenditure was $26.3 billion. I think that reasonably represents the annualized capital expenditure rate that we might see in 2025." In response to the question of capital expenditure possibly reaching around $100 billion, Jassy pointed out, "The vast majority of capital expenditure is for artificial intelligence in AWS (Amazon.com, Inc. Web Services). The way the AWS business operates and the cash cycle operates is the faster we grow, the more capital expenditure we eventually spend because we have to purchase data centers, hardware, chips, and networking equipment before we can monetize it." Jassy added that the company will not make purchases unless there are clear demand signals. "So as AWS expands its capital expenditure, especially in what we view as rare commercial opportunities like artificial intelligence, I think it's actually a pretty good medium-to-long-term signal for the AWS business," Jassy commented. Last week, Meta said it expects full-year capital expenditure in 2025 to be between $60 billion and $65 billion, higher than the expected $52 billion. Meta CFO Susan Li said the company's capital expenditure growth in 2025 will be driven by increased investments to support its generative AI work and core business. Microsoft Corporation announced last month that it plans to invest around $80 billion in data centers in the 2025 fiscal year. Microsoft Corporation Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella also expressed optimism about artificial intelligence in last week's earnings call. "Azure is the foundational layer for artificial intelligence. Nadella said. "We will continue to expand data center capacity based on recent and long-term demand signals." Last week, Fitch Ratings stated that if the current investment pace continues, there is a risk of oversupply in artificial intelligence infrastructure highlighted by DeepSeek's AI model. The rating agency also stated that this development could moderate the hyper growth of AI chip manufacturers but lead to more sustainable investments in AI infrastructure, thereby limiting the severity of any eventual decline. DeepSeek unveiled its AI model R1 last month and detailed in a paper how large language models were built on a tight budget and improved without human supervision. On January 27, tech stocks plummeted, causing NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) to lose approximately $589 billion in market value.