Alphabet, Nvidia and Marvell drive tech rally as AI capex expectations surge
Investors weigh cautious geopolitical optimism against a backdrop of massive artificial intelligence infrastructure spending, with Goldman Sachs projecting $5.3 trillion in hyperscaler capital expenditure through 2030.
Tech stocks rose modestly on Wednesday as investors weighed cautious optimism for a US-Iran ceasefire against the backdrop of significant corporate announcements from the Computex conference in Taiwan. The market rally was underpinned by quarterly earnings anticipation from chipmakers and a series of high-profile developments in the artificial intelligence sector, including a massive capital raise by Alphabet and a confidential initial public offering filing by Anthropic.
Alphabet announced plans to raise $80 billion through stock sales to fund an $180 billion to $190 billion capital expenditure budget for artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company intends to offer $30 billion in underwritten public offerings and $40 billion directly to shareholders, beginning in the third quarter of this year. An additional $10 billion tranche was sold to Berkshire Hathaway, the global holding company founded by Warren Buffett. Alphabet stated that the proceeds would be used for general corporate purposes, including scaling AI infrastructure and global compute capabilities to meet strong enterprise and consumer demand.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s keynote address at Computex Taipei further boosted sentiment, particularly for software stocks. Huang dismissed fears that agentic AI would render software companies obsolete, arguing that the proliferation of AI agents would instead increase demand for tools and platforms. The Nvidia chief also unveiled the RTX Spark processor for Windows laptops, a move that sent PC maker shares higher. Marvell Technology shares surged following Huang’s comment that the chipmaker could become the next trillion-dollar company, with Marvell stock jumping 12 per cent in premarket trading on Wednesday after a 32 per cent gain the previous day.
In the private markets, Anthropic filed confidential paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public, valuing the company at $965 billion. The filing comes shortly after Anthropic announced the completion of its Series H funding round, beating rival OpenAI to the punch in the race for a public listing. The company noted that the number of shares and the stock price have not yet been set, with the proposed initial public offering dependent on market conditions and SEC review.
Goldman Sachs strategists have updated their outlook on hyperscaler spending, now expecting a combined $5.3 trillion in capital expenditure for the four largest tech giants from fiscal year 2025 to fiscal year 2030. This represents a significant increase from previous estimates of $4.5 trillion. For the 2026 calendar year alone, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta collectively plan to allocate $725 billion to capital expenditures, a 77 per cent increase from the previous year. The baseline aggregate estimate stands at $7.6 trillion between 2026 and 2031, covering compute, data centres, and power infrastructure.
