AI Giants in the US Face Supply Chain 'Omni-directional Bottlenecks'

On April 30, $725 billion — this is the total capital expenditure cap for this year by four tech giants: Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon. Behind the aggressive capital spending, each giant is confronted with limitations and price pressures in hardware infrastructure: Microsoft stated that out of its $190 billion capital expenditure, $25 billion is allocated to address rising component prices; Google reported a capital expenditure of $35.7 billion this quarter, which includes real estate, servers, data centers, and other infrastructure; Meta attributed its increased capital expenditure to the rising costs of hardware components this year and the additional costs for data centers needed to support future capacity. Jefferies technology analysts noted, ‘What we are seeing is an omni-directional bottleneck. Those hyperscale cloud service providers either have to wait or pay higher costs to gain access. This is good for the ‘shovel sellers,’ but not favorable for companies that need to integrate all aspects together.’ (Dongxin News Agency)