Hyper-scaler capex estimates are still climbing.

And with free cash flow dwindling, management has little choice but to fund AI outlays “with external sources of capital,” as Goldman put it, in an earnings update.

Consider the following. At the beginning of 2026, company analysts collectively expected the hyper-scalers to spend $546 billion this year, up more than a third from 2025. Just prior to Q2 reporting season, that estimate was up to $757 billion, representing an 84% jump from the prior year’s outlays. Now, following reports from Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, the estimate for 2026, including Oracle, is nearly $800 billion, almost double 2025.

If you think that’s a lot — and unless you’re Elon Musk, $800 billion unequivocally counts as “a lot” — you haven’t seen anything yet. In light of last month’s management commentary, bottom-up consensus expects the hyper-scalers to spend nearly $1.05 trillion in 2027, up $125 billion from the pre-reporting season forecast.

As the figure above shows, those outlays, including Oracle’s spending, are expected to rise further still in 2028 to $1.3 trillion, a near tenfold increase over five years.

The upward revision to the 2027 consensus was notable not just for the scope, but for the timing. As Goldman’s Ben Snider remarked, “the typical pattern was for moderate capex revisions in the middle of the calendar year,” which is to say a meaningful bump in forecasts for next year’s spending wasn’t expected until later in 2026.

The figure on the left, below from Snider, compares the projected 2027 peak in the ratio of capex to cash flow for the hyper-scalers to the same metric for telecom stocks during the dot-com bubble.

The figure on the right shows you how capex stacked up to FCF last quarter for the biggest spenders — and also the extent to which they tapped capital markets to offset some of the burn.

According to company analysts, hyper-scaler capex will outstrip cash flow from operations through 2028, “driv[ing] an increase in debt issuance and a growing focus [among] equity investors on corporate credit spreads,” Snider wrote.

Equity issuance, he went on, is “likely [to] increase in coming quarters” as will the share of capex funded by new debt. In 2027, Goldman’s credit team expects the hyper-scalers to issue $400 billion of new IG debt between them globally.