There's this chart from a16z. It shows the quarterly capital expenditures of the world's five largest tech companies. Four lines shoot almost vertically. The fifth lies flat like a sleeping person's heartbeat.
The fifth is Apple.
Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta increased capex by 42–95% over the past year. The main expense item is AI infrastructure: data centers, GPUs, energy capacity. Combined — $112.5B in a single quarter. Money that so far generates more promises than revenue — but no one plans to stop, it's too frightening to be the one who didn't make it in time. Apple spent $12.7B for all of 2025. Nine times less than competitors spent in three months. And showed minus 19% year over year.
Yet Apple's stock over two years grew from $180 to $255 — up 40%. Market cap — $3.8T, second in the world. Net profit for Q1 — a record $42B.
So the company that demonstratively isn't participating in the decade's biggest investment story is doing just fine. At least for now.
In 2025, Apple did announce plans to invest $500B in AI infrastructure over four years. But even with that promise, the 2026 forecast is $14B. Amazon's for the same year — $125B.
There are two possible explanations.
They're late. Apple genuinely underestimated the speed at which AI is reshaping the industry and is now catching up with a two-to-three year lag.
They're not in a rush. Apple is waiting for competitors to overheat the infrastructure market, for hardware prices to correct — and then will enter the game on its own terms, with the usual premium for being fashionably late.
In both cases, the coming year will show who was right: those who spent, or the one who waited.