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Big Tech is on track to spend $600 billion on AI in 2026 and are barely buying startups
AI is reshaping the M&A landscape, and Big Tech’s AI spending is accelerating, but its AI acquisition activity tells a different story. Combined AI infrastructure spending by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta is projected to reach nearly $600 billion in 2026, yet acquisition activity across the Big Five has remained well below historical levels, hitting a decade low of seven deals in 2024 before recovering modestly to 14 in 2025 and 12 in 2026 YTD. Rather than buying AI capability, Big Tech is redirecting capital toward infrastructure build-out and large strategic minority investments. Microsoft’s nearly 30% stake in OpenAI and Meta’s $14.3 billion Series G into Scale AI represent a new category of commitment that sits closer to infrastructure guarantee than a conventional corporate venture deal. NVIDIA is moving differently, using 15 AI-related acquisitions since 2022 to extend dominance across the full AI stack. Enterprise software incumbents like Salesforce and Databricks are actively acquiring as AI agents put pressure on the per-seat licensing models that defined SaaS economics for two decades, with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF falling 29.6% between December 2025 and February 2026.
For AI companies evaluating exit options, the picture is more nuanced than deal count suggests. The VC-backed exit market has taken on a barbell shape: a small number of strategically significant deals concentrated among well-capitalized acquirers, alongside a large population of undisclosed-value transactions generating limited returns for investors. Two newly emerged risk categories are adding complexity. Regulators have opened probes into talent acquisition structures used by Microsoft and Google, and China’s order unwinding Meta’s $2 billion Manus acquisition in April 2026 established that cross-border AI deals carry geopolitical risk that corporate domicile cannot insulate against. Exits remain achievable for AI companies with the right capability profile and buyer alignment, but the path is narrower and more acquirer-specific than headline activity implies.
Big Tech’s record AI infrastructure spend has reinforced a pullback in acquisitions, with the modest recovery since 2024 remaining uneven across the group.
Table of contents
| Key takeaways | 1 |
| Introduction | 2 |
| Big Tech: Building and backing, not buying | 4 |
| NVIDIA: Acquiring to extend the AI infrastructure stack | 10 |
| Enterprise software incumbents: Acquiring to compete | 12 |
| Frontier AI labs and large AI-native companies as acquirers | 15 |
| Regulatory and geopolitical challenges | 17 |
| M&A and exit implications | 19 |
| References | 20 |
