[Global Network Financial Comprehensive Report] A few days ago, Morgan Stanley released its latest Global Cloud Capital Expenditure Tracking Report. It shows that capital expenditure by the world’s leading hyperscale cloud vendors has maintained growth, with the year-on-year growth rate projected to hit 29% in 2027.
Morgan Stanley notes that the market consensus for cloud capital expenditure in 2027 stands at $1.2 trillion, but this forecast may be overly conservative, with actual spending potentially rising to $1.4 trillion. Over the past year, investors remain concerned about the soaring capital expenditure associated with the large-scale construction of AI data centers, which has brought some volatility to the market.
However, demand for computing power has consistently outstripped supply, and the commercialization capacity of AI keeps improving. Against this backdrop, three of the world’s four leading hyperscale cloud providers have raised their capital expenditure guidance for fiscal year 2026: Amazon lifted its target from $2000 billion to $2200 billion. Google narrowed its guidance range from $1800–$1900 billion to $1850–$2050 billion. Meta tightened its range from $1250–$1450 billion to $1300–$1450 billion. Microsoft, meanwhile, maintained its guidance at $1900 billion.
AllianceBernstein also released a research report, stating that overseas leading cloud vendors continue to build out AI computing infrastructure. In the medium and long run, this is expected to keep driving demand for upstream hardware such as GPUs and high-speed storage, and boost demand for HBM and server DRAM. Overseas major storage manufacturers are shifting their production capacity toward high-end AI storage. The marginal growth rate of DRAM and NAND price hikes has moderated, highlighting structural differentiation within the industry.