Tech Companies to Keep Spending on A.I. Despite Worries of Slow Payoff

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, started 2023 by declaring it the “year of efficiency.” Like several of its big tech peers, Meta cut jobs and mothballed expansion plans.

Then came A.I.

Mr. Zuckerberg started this year saying his company would spend more than $30 billion in 2024 on new tech infrastructure. In April, he raised that to $35 billion. On Wednesday, he increased it to at least $37 billion. And he said Meta would spend even more next year.

Mr. Zuckerberg said he’d rather build too fast “rather than too late,” and allow his competitors to get a big lead in the A.I. race.

The tech industry’s biggest companies have made it clear over the last week that they have no intention of throttling their stunning levels of spending on artificial intelligence, even though investors are getting worried that a big payoff is further down the line than once thought.

In the last quarter alone, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet spent a combined $59 billion on capital expenses, 63 percent more than a year earlier and 161 percent more than four years ago. A large part of that was funneled into building data centers and packing them with new computer systems to build artificial intelligence. Only Apple has not dramatically increased spending because it does not build the most advanced A.I. systems itself.