The wave of investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating one of the largest capital allocations in modern business history, forcing both leading global technology corporations and AI startups to seek new sources of funding to sustain the expansion of their computing infrastructure.
According to the latest estimates, in 2026 alone, the four major technology corporations—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta—could invest a total of more than $700 billion in data centers, computing power, and AI infrastructure.
When you include investments from companies like Oracle, Salesforce, OpenAI, and Anthropic, total industry spending could exceed $1 trillion.
The massive scale of investment is creating unprecedented financial pressure, even for companies with abundant cash reserves and profits of tens of billions of dollars each quarter. To meet capital needs, many businesses have simultaneously implemented measures such as staff reductions, stock issuance, debt financing, investment fundraising, or preparing for stock market listings.
One of the most notable developments is that Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI model, has filed confidential documents in preparation for an initial public offering (IPO).
This move comes just days after the company completed a new funding round, bringing its valuation to approximately $965 billion, higher than OpenAI's most recent valuation of around $852 billion.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders and researchers, Anthropic focuses on developing AI solutions for businesses in areas such as legal services, cybersecurity, and data analytics.
The company said its annual revenue, converted to US dollars, now stands at approximately $47 billion, a significant increase from around $10 billion in the same period last year.
Analysts believe Anthropic's IPO plans could become a crucial test of investor confidence in the prospects of AI commercialization. Besides Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI are also reportedly preparing large-scale fundraising plans in the near future.
Not only startups, but also leading technology corporations are seeking additional financial resources to meet investment needs. Meta, a company that plans to spend up to $145 billion on AI this year, has cut approximately 10% of its workforce to reallocate resources to AI projects.
Meanwhile, Google plans to invest approximately $190 billion in AI infrastructure and has just announced an $80 billion stock offering to support this plan. The deal includes a $10 billion investment from Berkshire Hathaway and several other stock offerings expected to be implemented this year.
According to experts, the demand for AI computing power continues to grow rapidly while the costs of building data centers, power systems, processing chips, and network infrastructure are increasing. This makes it impossible for businesses to rely solely on cost reduction or restructuring existing resources.
Analysts believe that in the near future, the market may see more issuances of stocks, bonds, and other new forms of fundraising to finance the global AI race.
However, the big question is how long investors will be willing to finance this massive spending spree if businesses haven't demonstrated profitability commensurate with the scale of investment.
Observers believe the AI competition is entering a new phase, in which the ability to raise capital may become just as decisive as technological capability.
The race to develop AI is therefore increasingly seen as a race in terms of finance, infrastructure, and capital resilience among global technology companies.