Big Tech is Ploughing $650 Billion into AI this Year. Here’s How the Spend is Creating Adjacent Investment Opportunities

When it comes to demand for AI, 2026 has seen no signs of a slowdown. This year, the technology appears set to receive even greater capital support to continue strengthening infrastructure to expand AI services and embed the technology into an expanding range of devices. 

The AI industry is now entering a more mature phase that moves us beyond experimentation and pilot projects. In particular, the four Big Tech "hyperscalers" have all made it clear that AI remains at the core of their growth strategy for the future. 

Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META) are on course to spend at least $650 billion on AI investments this year, according to recent reports. 

Amazon said on Thursday it would invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, an announcement that followed Alphabet telling investors on Wednesday that its capex would fall between $175 billion and $185 billion this year. 

While the big tech giants plough their capital into AI, investors can find opportunities in adjacent markets being furthered thanks to the behemoth figures associated with the technology. 

For instance, industry experts have warned that this wave of AI spending will be constrained less by innovation than by the physical limits of infrastructure. According to Hari Vasudevan, CEO of KYRO AI, AI’s real backbone is the concrete, steel, and electrons behind data centers and power grids. As Big Tech pours hundreds of billions into AI, the rush to expand and modernize this infrastructure creates a powerful secondary opportunity for investors in construction, engineering, and energy, among other areas.

From data centers in emerging markets and innovation engines built by venture capital firms to AI adopters, the latest chapter of the AI race is opening up a much more diverse range of growth opportunities. 

Here’s what this means for new investments. 

Emerging markets expand data center capacity globally 

As the big tech hyper-scalers invest billions into AI to expand solution offerings and services, one of the biggest challenges will be ensuring that data centers can keep pace with usage rates. 

Up until now, data center infrastructure has largely been concentrated in developed markets. The US alone hosts nearly half of the world’s facilities. However, this approach will quickly struggle to keep pace with the uptick in AI adoption globally.

Companies are rapidly expanding capacity into emerging markets to meet soaring demand. This shift addresses power constraints in traditional hubs while accessing faster growth, lower costs, and renewable energy opportunities. 

In Latin America, for instance, Colombia is rapidly expanding its data center market at a rapid pace, helping the country secure its position as a regional location in Latin America. 

As of the end of last year, Colombia hosts 38 data centers with several more currently in development.  

Local availability of data centers will also stimulate the digital economy for regional and multinational providers. Source Meridian offers software development and data engineering services and the company has been increasing its footprint across Latin America in recent years, with offices in the US, Colombia and, most recently, Ecuador. The increased availability of local data centers is key to making big data and ML solutions built even more feasible for regional businesses. 

Further, the market in the region is expected to nearly double to $10 billion by 2029, with Brazil, Mexico, and Chile leading construction.

Meanwhile, India's data center capacity is projected to surge 77% by 2027 to reach 1.8GW, with Google investing $15 billion in an AI data center in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Some $25-30 billion is expected to be spent in capacity expansion by 2030, according to estimates.

The expanding availability of local data centers is also supporting another key part of India’s tech economy in the form of Global Capacity Centers (GCCs). India is a leading provider of innovation to multinationals through its GCCs, but these can be supported with data processing capabilities located in close proximity. 

According to Ness Digital Engineering, which recently named Sudip Singh as its new CEO, enterprises are building or expanding their own GCCs, especially in India, to bring product development, data, and digital operations closer to their core. They are emerging as centers of excellence deeply aligned with business priorities and directly accountable for innovation and velocity. Singh was earlier the CEO of ITC Infotech, and prior was an executive with Infosys, where he served as global industry head for the energy, utilities and resources business.

This highlights the investment opportunities associated with data centers in emerging markets. As these countries vie to establish regional hubs to help power the global AI revolution, we can expect to see rapid growth from both the direct development of the infrastructure and associated tech companies. 

Publicly traded companies to watch include Reliance Industries (RS) and Ecopetrol (EC).

As capital seeks opportunities, a focus will be on VCs for up-and-coming AI innovation 

A shift toward monetization, return on investment and enterprise applications strengthens the case for diversifying beyond Big Tech to capture broader opportunities. 

In 2025, AI captured 53% of global VC deal value. While mega-rounds captured much of this activity last year, 2026 is expected to see a closer focus on emerging opportunities as these funds look to back the next big idea at an early stage. 

Venture capital firms are playing an increasingly important role in fueling these adjacent growth opportunities by supporting diverse innovation initiatives with the capital to get off the ground. 

In particular, as investments in data centers ramp up, we should expect the Fortune 500 to partner with governments in order to expand scale and reach, with VCs serving as a key conduit here. 

For instance, in January LG NOVA and NovaWave Capital announced a strategic partnership with the Arizona Commerce Authority to launch the WaveX AI venture studio in Arizona. This initiative focuses on accelerating high-growth AI startups in energy, healthcare, and enterprise sectors, connecting Silicon Valley innovation with Arizona’s regional ecosystem to foster AI-driven economic growth.

"By bridging Silicon Valley innovation with the fast-growing ecosystems of regional and international markets, we are seeking to build the next generation of AI, energy and health companies that will accelerate America's innovation economy," explained Ali Diallo, Founder of Aurion Capital and Managing Partner at NovaWave Capital. 

One Way Ventures is another notable VC fund helping to uncover promising AI-related startups. The firm has invested in AI edtech startup Buddy.ai’s impressive $11M seed round, in addition to a $3.2M USD round for the construction platform Billdr.

AI adopters, setting a new divide across industries, will be increasingly leaned on 

As AI moves out of its era of experimentation, 2026 will be defined by how quickly and adeptly businesses can adopt the technology and demonstrate successful, tangible applications. Companies like ADvendio, which recently introduced its Revenue OS solution for agentic advertising, and MyUser, which created a proprietary AI for B2B sales, are playing a key role in getting AI into the hands of end users. This is in addition to enterprises such as QuickBlox that are advancing people-to-people communications with AI-powered real-time solutions, and, when it comes to the growing pet market, ventures such as AI-powered pet screening Get Pawtected that are helping to support the housing industry.

By integrating AI, companies in 2026 will increasingly accelerate automation, optimize cost structures, and boost productivity in ways that generate measurable value and help establish new or deepen existing competitive advantages. 

Although this has been the objective of AI for many years, 2026 is the year that the technology and its infrastructure is robust enough for these advantages to actually set the divide between the AI adopters and the laggards. 

While the focus will be on the technology, investors also shouldn’t miss out on opportunities related to company culture and the impact of the technology's adoption. According to thought leader Fernando Gaspar Barros, “The most impactful company cultures are ones that transcend the hype and leave corporate engagement buzzwords in the boardroom. The real differentiating factor in the era of AI, then, lies in an approach that is built on trust, identity, and human culture." 

Publicly-traded companies to watch include Workday (WDAY) and Insperity (NSP).

AI today represents a potentially disruptive force that could create a technological divide across industries, making it critical for companies to successfully harness the technology. This means that investment opportunities will no longer be strictly linked to one industry, but rather to the level of innovation within each company.