Will the Gulf's push for its own AI succeed? That, and US tech giants' plans to spend more than $600bn this year alone. Can the Gulf states capture some of the US's tech dominance for themselves? I spent most of last week in Doha at the Web Summit Qatar, the Gulf's new version of the popular annual tech conference. One theme stood out among the speeches I watched and the conversations I had: sovereignty.

Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon are investing tens of billions in data centers. AI infrastructure is now a key driver of US economic growth. The amount of capital pouring into AI data center projects is staggering. Last week, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon reported their 2025 capital expenditures would total roughly $370 billion, and they expect that number to keep rising in 2026. The biggest spender last quarter was Microsoft, which put nearly $35 billion into data centers and other investments, equivalent to 45 percent of its revenue. Rarely, if ever, has a single technology absorbed this much money this quickly.

Three of the biggest US tech companies reported record profits and record infrastructure spending on Wednesday, fueling speculation about a possible AI market bubble. Three of the biggest US tech giants--Microsoft, Meta, and Google--sent investors a blunt message when they reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday: Their lavish spending on AI infrastructure is only just getting started. Meta said that its capital expenditure would total between $70 billion and $72 billion this year, up from its previous lower forecast of $66 billion to $72 billion. Next year, Meta's chief financial officer Susan Li said that she expected the company's spending would be "notably larger." The social media giant's soaring investment matches its soaring revenue: Meta reported raking in $51.24 billion last quarter, up 26 percent year-over-year.

The US's largest companies have spent 2025 locked in a competition to spend more money than one another, lavishing 155bn on the development of artificial intelligence, more than the US government has spent on education, training, employment and social services in the 2025 fiscal year so far. Based on the most recent financial disclosures of Silicon Valley's biggest players, the race is about to accelerate to hundreds of billions in a single year. Over the past two weeks, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, Google's parent, have shared their quarterly public financial reports. Each disclosed that their year-to-date capital expenditure, a figure that refers to the money companies spend to acquire or upgrade tangible assets, already totals tens of billions. Capex, as the term is abbreviated, is a proxy for technology companies' spending on AI because the technology requires gargantuan investments in physical infrastructure, namely data centers, which require large amounts of power, water and expensive semiconductor chips.

Whether it's poaching top talent away from competitors, acquiring AI startups or proclaiming that it will build data centers the size of Manhattan, Meta has been on a spending spree to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities for months now. The massive splurge is paying off, according to Meta's chief executive. In a new memo posted on Wednesday ahead of the company's quarterly earnings report, Mark Zuckerberg, describes his ambitions for developing what he calls "superintelligence". "Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves," Zuckerberg wrote. "The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable. Developing superintelligence is now in sight."

Microsoft, the world's second-most valuable company, is dumping enormous sums of money into its artificial intelligence efforts. At the same time, the company is earning money hand over fist. The enterprise software giant reported fiscal fourth-quarter results that exceeded expectations on Wednesday as the company races to acquire datacenters and talent, which continues to be investigated by investors. The company predicted its capital expenditure for the next fiscal year would top 100bn, a 14% increase from the year prior. It's the fifth quarter in a row that Microsoft has beaten Wall Street's expectations.

The tech industry is in a high-flying war over who can dole out more millions to attract artificial intelligence specialists. Individual researchers, most equipped with PhDs in computer science, are commanding giant salaries and mammoth signing bonuses in hiring negotiations. You might call them talent. The Washington Post called them Olympians in a recent headline: "Why AI superathletes could be winning 100 million bonuses in Silicon Valley." These are the most sought-after employees in the world.

Shares of Google's parent company Alphabet fell more than 6% after the company reported a slight miss in expected revenue on Tuesday. The company reported 96.5bn, compared with analyst expectations of 96.67 bn. The company surpassed investors' expectations of 2.13 in earnings per share, however, with 2.15 in EPS. "Q4 was a strong quarter driven by our leadership in AI and momentum across the business," Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai wrote in a statement. "We are building, testing, and launching products and models faster than ever, and making significant progress in compute and driving efficiencies."

Artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) has the potential to generate huge business value for semiconductor companies at every step of their operations, from research and chip design to production through sales. But our recent survey of semiconductor-device makers shows that only about 30 percent of respondents stated that they are already generating value through AI/ML. Notably, these companies have made significant investments in AI/ML talent, as well as the data infrastructure, technology, and other enablers, and have already fully scaled up their initial use cases. The other respondents--about 70 percent--are still in the pilot phase with AI/ML and their progress has stalled. We believe that the application of AI/ML will dramatically accelerate in the semiconductor industry over the next few years. Taking steps to scale up now will allow companies to capture the full benefits of these technologies. This article focuses on device makers, including integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), fabless players, foundries, and semiconductor assembly and test services, or SATS (for more information on our research, see sidebar, "Our methodology").

Over the last couple of years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has changed from a technology with potential to an instrument of national importance across the world. The first demonstration of applications of AI has happened in the consumer space, and significant economic value has been created, mainly through targeted advertising by internet giants in the US and China. According to a report by PwC, AI could contribute a whopping $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 20301. However, for India, AI is much more than just a piece of this pie. For India, the real power of AI lies in its transformative potential to address massive societal challenges that were traditionally considered to be beyond the purview of computing.