Today on Forbes, Google's data center buildout could top $1 trillion.

On an earnings call last month, Google's CEO Sundar Pachai said the company would spend

up to $185 billion on capital expenditures related to AI this year, which is more than

double the $90 billion it spent in 2025.

But that could just be the beginning.

Amin Vadat is Google's newly minted chief technologist for AI infrastructure.

In his first interview since taking on the newly created role, he tells Forbes that over

the next several years, the company's data center spending will add up to a, quote,

significant investment. At $185 billion annually, in eight years, the spending would reach about $1.5 trillion.

This is slightly more than Open AI has committed to over the same period.

Extend that out to a decade, and the total could approach $1.9 trillion.

Vodz stresses that this is, quote, not a promise that Google will spend that much,

but the long-term outlook illustrates the scale of the company's bet.

He says, quote, the point here is that

we are, at Google, investing at the highest levels. There is, however, a major difference between

Google's ambitions and opening eyes. Google is a money-making machine. In the fourth quarter alone,

parent company Alphabet reported $113 billion in revenue,

and full-year sales topped $400 billion for the first time in the company's 25-year history.

By comparison, Open AI is spending at similar levels, but only generated roughly $13 billion in revenue last

year, a fraction of Google's sales, and less than half of Google's cash reserves.

The seemingly insatiable demand for compute has become the central economic force of the

AI era.

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