{"id":3618,"date":"2026-02-13T15:28:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T15:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/?p=3618"},"modified":"2026-02-13T15:28:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T15:28:45","slug":"these-3-stocks-are-quietly-soaring-as-microsoft-google-slump-on-ai-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/?p=3618","title":{"rendered":"These 3 stocks are quietly soaring as Microsoft, Google slump on AI spending"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amazon, Microsoft, and Google-parent Alphabet have spent weeks convincing investors that their AI buildout will pay off, but the market\u2019s patience is thinning as 2026 capital-spending plans climb.<\/p>\n

Amazon helped spark the latest wobble after flagging about $200 billion of 2026 capex, while Alphabet projected $175 billion to $185 billion, figures that revived worries about near-term cash flow and margins.<\/p>\n

In the background, a different trade is working: buying the suppliers and landlords of AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Heavy AI capex dampens mega-cap stocks<\/h2>\n

The pressure on hyperscalers is not about demand fading. It is about the price tag of meeting it.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s forecast for roughly $200 billion of 2026 capital spending, aimed largely at data centers and AI-related infrastructure, surprised investors and weighed on the shares.<\/p>\n

Alphabet\u2019s outlook was similarly jarring: it told investors to expect 2026 capex of $175 billion to $185 billion, a step-up that briefly pushed the stock down as much as 3% in after-hours trading, despite a strong quarter.<\/p>\n

Investors are making a classic trade-off calculation.<\/p>\n

Heavy capex can boost long-term capacity, but it also hits free cash flow in the near term, money that could have gone to buybacks, dividends, or simply kept margins higher.<\/p>\n

The investors are simply concerned about Big Tech\u2019s AI spending, which may approach roughly $700 billion this year<\/a>, and the \u201cblow to cash\u201d is starting to raise red flags.<\/p>\n

That skepticism is also feeding a rotation dynamic.<\/p>\n

When large platforms tell the market they need to spend aggressively just to keep up, their stocks can de-rate (meaning investors are willing to pay a lower valuation multiple) even if revenue holds up.<\/p>\n

The flip side is that every dollar of hyperscaler capex becomes potential revenue for companies selling chips, manufacturing capacity, and data-center infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Read More: <\/em><\/strong>Anthropic lands $30B at $380B valuation as AI funding hits new extreme<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

AI\u2019s quiet winners<\/h2>\n

As per The Motley Fool<\/a> analysis, one clear beneficiary has been Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.<\/p>\n

TSMC has been posting record results and pointing to robust AI-related demand for advanced chips, while planning to keep investing heavily to expand leading-edge capacity.<\/p>\n

In January, TSMC\u2019s quarterly profit jumped 35% as AI-driven orders for advanced chips continued to dominate, and the company outlined 2026 capex of roughly $52 billion to $56 billion.<\/p>\n

Separate market coverage also tied a stock rally to strong January sales and AI-chip strength, reinforcing the view that TSMC\u2019s fabs remain central to the AI supply chain.<\/p>\n

Nvidia has become the purest \u201cpicks and shovels\u201d expression of the AI buildout.<\/p>\n

The stock jumped about 7.8% on Feb. 6 for its best day since April, as investors bought the companies most directly positioned to benefit from the same hyperscaler spending that weighed on the platforms themselves.<\/p>\n

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that the roughly $660 billion capex buildout by major customers is sustainable, a message that helped steady sentiment after a volatile stretch for AI-linked equities.<\/p>\n

Applied Digital is a smaller name, but it sits in a sweet spot of the same trend, providing specialized data-center capacity for high-performance computing workloads.<\/p>\n

Applied Digital secured long-term lease agreements with CoreWeave, expected to generate about $7 billion<\/a> in revenue over the term, effectively positioning the company as a capacity provider to an AI hyperscaler.<\/p>\n

The takeaway for 2026 is straightforward.<\/p>\n

As hyperscalers absorb the capex burden, the market is rewarding the firms with cleaner, more direct exposure to AI infrastructure demand.<\/p>\n

The post These 3 stocks are quietly soaring as Microsoft, Google slump on AI spending<\/a> appeared first on Invezz<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google-parent Alphabet have spent weeks convincing investors that their AI buildout will pay off, but the market\u2019s patience is thinning as 2026 capital-spending plans climb.Amazon helped spark the latest wobble after flagging about $200 billion of 2026 capex, while Alphabet projected $175 billion to $185 billion, figures that revived worries about near-term…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}