Big Tech Commits $740 Billion to AI as 2026 Tech Layoffs Top 118,000

1 articles · Updated · Fortune · Jun 14

$740 billion in AI capital spending has been announced by Big Tech so far in 2026, up 69% from 2025 even as the sector has cut more than 118,000 jobs across nearly 100 companies.
Costs remain a key reason the spending looks contradictory: Nvidia says compute already exceeds labor costs, and an MIT study found AI automation was economically viable in only 23% of vision-heavy roles.
Meta planned to cut about 8,000 workers and drop 6,000 open roles to fund other investments, while Uber said it exhausted its 2026 AI coding-tools budget by April after pushing employee adoption.
Keith Lee of the Swiss Institute of Artificial Intelligence said AI is still a complementary tool because hardware, energy and flat-fee pricing keep operating costs high despite broader adoption.
McKinsey estimates AI spending could reach $5.2 trillion by 2030, while Gartner projects inference costs for a 1-trillion-parameter model may fall more than 90% over four years.