Apple the only big tech to reduce cap expenditure last year?

Apple is the only Big Tech company whose capex declined last quarter

If you’ve been following Big Tech earnings, you know that they’re pouring more than ever into capital expenditure to pursue their AI futures.

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft all spent record sums last quarter on AI-related purchases of property and equipment, largely tied to AI chips and data centers. Their future plans are even more ambitious, with estimates for the year blowing analysts’ already generous estimates out of the water — Amazon expects its 2026 capex to surge to $200 billion; Google aims for $175 billion to $185 billion; Meta estimates somewhere between $115 billion and $135 billion.

But, of the Big Tech companies, only one stands apart this earnings season: Apple, whose capital expenditure, already just a fraction of its peers, actually declined in the December quarter from a year earlier.

For better or worse, Apple has struck its own path with AI. Unlike its peers, the company has chosen a hybrid model, relying on both first- and third-party data centers — a move that keeps a significant amount of infrastructure spending off its balance sheet. And while Apple expects capex to increase as it invests more heavily in AI, those outlays remain minimal compared with its peers.

Indeed, Apple is using Google’s Gemini, rather than an in-house model, for its next-gen Siri and Apple Intelligence, giving the company access to a top-tier AI model for pennies on the dollar compared to what other Big Tech companies are spending to build their own. While that means that the company won’t fully won't fully own a technologythat some see as powering the next industrial revolution, if that revolution fails to materialize, at least Apple won’t be left holding the most expensive bag in Silicon Valley history.