At Big Tech, Cloud Revenue Growth Is Catching Up to Capex

The big tech firms pouring tens of billions into capital expenditures for new data centers and servers for their cloud services are beginning to see revenues catch up.

Growth in capex spending by Microsoft, Google and Amazon dramatically outpaced their cloud revenue expansion between 2023 and 2024, our analysis shows. But in the past year, that has changed. Microsoft’s capex in the past 12 months was 38% higher than the year before, but its Azure cloud revenue also grew 34% in that time, according to financial disclosures. And Google’s capex over the past year rose 35% from the year prior, while its cloud revenue rose 31%.