CapEx: Ex Big 6 — Or Is It Big 4?

Four Companies Are Driving the Entire CapEx Story

Here is the headline: across more than 1,100 public companies, Capital Expenditures appear to be up nearly 15% year-over-year. But that number is almost entirely a mirage. Strip out four companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft — and CapEx for the rest of corporate America actually fell 3.4% in Q4 2025 versus a year ago.

Four firms. That is the entire story. Everything else is noise.

We will show you the data below — but we wanted to say that up front, because the aggregate number alone is deeply misleading.

CapEx is up nearly 15% in our broad sample — one of the strongest moves in the monitor, trailing only Operating Cash Flow (+20.4%) and Restructuring (+22.7%). It looks impressive. As we noted up front, it is not what it seems.

Big 6 — Or Really Big 4?

With NVIDIA yet to report, six of the Magnificent 7 have now filed results. Not all of them are spending more — Tesla and Apple both cut CapEx year-over-year. The real drivers are just four: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, who together added roughly $48 billion in incremental capital spending versus Q4 2024. Here is the breakdown.

Combined, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft added roughly $48 billion in incremental CapEx versus the prior year — a striking concentration of investment activity driven almost entirely by AI infrastructure buildout.

What Happens When You Exclude Them?

Once you remove those six reporting Mag 7 members from our broader sample, the CapEx picture flips — from a +14.9% gain to a modest decline.

Excluding the six reported Mag 7 companies, aggregate CapEx for the remaining 1,102 firms actually fell 3.05% year-over-year. Narrow the exclusion to just the four meaningful spenders — dropping Tesla and Apple back into the sample — and the decline steepens to −3.44%.

The takeaway: the CapEx boom is real, but it is highly concentrated. Strip away four companies, and the rest of corporate America is actually pulling back on capital investment. It is worth noting that this reflects a single quarter of data — one data point is not a trend, and we should be careful about overstating the conclusion. That said, the magnitude of the concentration is difficult to dismiss. When four firms can single-handedly swing a market-wide decline into a double-digit gain, that is a signal worth watching closely, particularly as AI infrastructure investment continues to accelerate.

NVIDIA Still to Come

We will revisit this analysis once NVIDIA reports later this month. Given NVIDIA's AI infrastructure buildout, it is likely to add further to the hyperscaler CapEx total — making the concentration story even more pronounced.