Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta reported Q2 2026 earnings, directly addressing investor concerns about AI capital expenditure returns. Amazon raised its 2026 CapEx to ~$220B, Google to $195-205B, and Meta lifted its guide floor to $130-145B. All four companies outlined a common de-risking strategy: committing early to long-lived assets like land and data center shells, while ordering short-lived assets such as chips only a few months before needed, based on visible demand. Microsoft’s Amy Hood noted CapEx has pivoted toward short-lived assets with shorter lead times, allowing slowdowns if demand changes. Amazon’s management detailed that data center capital is spent starting 2 years before monetization. All four companies provided deep ROIC calculations, with coordinated messaging on CapEx returns. Nobody is guiding CapEx down, but all now explain it as a two-part investment. AI workloads remain a small percentage of total cloud revenue, with AWS at ~$25B AI run rate versus $169B total, yet they are pulling traditional workloads up. Cloud margins at AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud expanded again, effectively ending the “AI CapEx has low ROIC” thesis. Microsoft’s Copilot saw net adds more than double QoQ. Meta is building four new revenue lines beyond ads: transactional, compute, APIs, and subscriptions.