CSC Financial: North American CSP capital expenditure remains at a high intensity, AI commercialization drives accelerated growth in cloud business

CSC Research reports that four North American CSP providers have released their Q3 results, with capital expenditure continuing to grow and full-year guidance showing divergence. The four major North American cloud providers' combined capital expenditure for 2026Q3 was approximately US$208.7 billion, up 84.2% year-over-year and 21.9% quarter-over-quarter, with AI infrastructure investment remaining at a high intensity. On full-year guidance, Amazon maintained approximately US$220 billion; Microsoft adjusted its calendar year 2026 capital expenditure expectation from US$175 billion to US$170 billion due to delivery delays in third-party compute capacity; Google maintained US$195-205 billion; Meta narrowed its guidance from US$130-145 billion to US$135-145 billion. Based on each company's latest guidance or the midpoint of the range, the four companies' combined full-year capital expenditure is approximately US$730 billion, slightly down from US$732.5 billion after the Q2 reports, mainly reflecting adjustments in delivery pace, with the overall investment scale still at a high level. CSC remains bullish on the compute demand driven by AI development and maintains its long-term positive outlook on the North American compute industry chain and the domestic AI compute industry chain.