Global Cloud Capex Tracker: Spending Acceleration Continues

Research evidence excerpt

Global Cloud Capex Tracker: Spending Acceleration Continues

Idea

August 3, 2026 11:55 AM GMT

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLCMUS Technology | North America Erik W Woodring

Equity Analyst

Global Cloud Capex Tracker: Erik.Woodring@morganstanley.comBrian Nowak, CFA +1 212 296-8083

Brian.Nowak@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-3365

Spending Acceleration Joseph Moore

Joseph.Moore@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-7516

Continues Meta A Marshall

Meta.Marshall@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-0430

Cloud capex continues to move higher (+29% Y/Y in CY27, vs. Dylan Liu

+14% prior) as demand remains ahead of supply. With cloud ResearchDylan.Liu@morganstanley.comAssociate +1 212 761-4519

growth accelerating, AI monetization improving, and

IT Hardware

hyperscalers expressing growing confidence in ROIC, we believe North America

Cons capex estimates remain too conservative and skewed Industry View Cautious

higher. Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet are covered by

Brian Nowak. Microsoft is covered by Adam

Key Takeaways Wood. Oracle is covered by Sanjit Singh.

CoreWeave and Nebius are covered by Ryan

All 4 US hyperscalers remain supply constrained, with demand from both

Lountzis. Tesla is covered by Andrew Percoco.

external cloud customers and internal AI workloads exceeding capacity.

Cloud rev growth accelerated despite capacity limits as utilization improves, AI

services scale, and AI adoption drives broader infrastructure consumption.

Hyperscalers expressed greater confidence in CY26-CY27 ROIC, supported by

rising backlogs, multi-year commitments, pricing power, and efficiency gains.

AWS, Azure, and GCP all see sizable runway ahead as enterprise AI adoption

remains early and cloud migration continues.

Strong operating cash flow, equity/debt financing, leasing strategies, ASICs, and