The Handelot Times
Big Tech’s power shift: who owns AI, who owns the future
What changed in the first half of 2026 was the scale at which that power expanded, and the speed at which the competitive landscape around artificial intelligence reshaped the hierarchy.
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta collectively committed $725 billion in capital expenditure for the year, a 77 percent increase over 2025’s already record-breaking $410 billion.
The numbers were so large that they stopped sounding like corporate budgets and started sounding like the GDP figures of mid-sized nations.
Behind the spending was a single strategic conviction shared across every boardroom in Silicon Valley: whoever controlled the AI infrastructure layer would control the next era of technology.
The question that the first half of 2026 began to answer was whether Big Tech would maintain its grip, or whether a new class of AI-native companies would break through.
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