Getting artificial intelligence up and running can be expensive.

I'm David Brancaccio.

Big tech companies are making a king's ransom in the summer to fall quarter.

Microsoft, late yesterday, announced a profit in one quarter that's almost equal to what the nation's largest retailer Walmart made in all of last year.

So on the sometimes perverse logic of markets, Microsoft shares are

down 4% in pre-market trading now. Stocks of other big technology firms are drooping as well. Why the

paradox? Marketplace's Nova Safo explains. Microsoft reported a quarterly profit of nearly $25 billion,

but it spent nearly $20 billion,

mostly to build out its cloud business and artificial intelligence tools.

Google Parent Alphabet spent $13 billion, and Meta said it's likely to spend as much as $40 billion

this year on new investments, including AI. All three said their capital spending will continue at a robust

pace. During an earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that Mehta's expenditures are likely not

what investors want to hear, but he said the opportunities are too great not to invest.

Much of what companies are spending money on is building the giant computing centers they need to power AI.

And among the barriers they're coming up against is limits on how many high-powered chips they can acquire.

Chipmakers, including Nvidia, have struggled to keep up with demand.

And advanced micro devices this week set supplies will remain tight.

Limited chip supplies mean elevated costs for tech giants

as they build out their AI infrastructure. I'm Novosho for Marketplace.

Amazon reports its results later today. Nasdaq futures are down 1.1% now. In about an hour and a half,

we'll get the latest reading on U.S. inflation before the election and the central bank's interest rate meeting next week, the last reading.

Ahead of that, SMP futures are down 8 tenths of a percent. 88% of the workweek is spent communicating, so it's important to make sure your team does it well.

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