A few years from now it’ll be hard to look back and say we didn’t see this coming. The message isn’t subtle, its being shouted. The worlds largest tech companies are spending at a scale that’s impossible to ignore.

Earnings updates from Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms all showed the same thing: capital spending is going up, not down. And most of it is going into one place – data centers.

The reason is simple; we are running short on computing power. As AI usage explodes, so does the need for processing power. Every prompt, every model, every tool we touch is leaning on infrastructure that, right now, isn’t big enough. So, they’re building fast – and the numbers are massive.

Google alone is expected to spend roughly $190 billion. That’s not a typical corporate number, that’s the size of a government stimulus package. And it’s not happening in isolation, its happening across the Magnificent 7. We are seeing a wave of spending that looks a lot less like a normal cycle and a lot more like an arms race.

Source: LSEG. As of Apr 30, 2026

That matters. Companies don’t deploy this kind of capital unless they’re confident the demand is real and durable. And the impact doesn’t stop with tech. This spending flows through to semiconductors, energy, construction, and infrastructure. It’s broad and it’s meaningful.

Zoom out, and this starts to look familiar. Big buildouts like this – railroads, electricity, the internet – tend to define the next decade of growth. This looks like one of those moments. And moments like this are exactly why staying invested matters, because the biggest gains tend to come when the future is being built, not when it’s obvious to everyone.

I have also included a piece from our CIBC Economics team entitled “Time is money... sometimes”.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call at any time.

Have a great weekend.

Milan