Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and other tech giants are cutting back on headcount—but their spending on hardware and real estate keeps soaring

Layoffs in big tech dominated the business headlines in 2023. But for many affected companies, those cuts represented minor corrections after a decade-long hiring spree. Those same companies simultaneously made huge investments in equipment, property, and R&D—also known as capital expenditures. These twin surges reflect the enormous investments in hardware, software, and engineering talent demanded by cloud services—and made more urgent by the rise of AI. (Real estate is a major “capex” factor, too, especially for Intel’s new chip factories and Amazon’s ever-expanding warehouse network.) The takeaway: For now, staying ahead at tech’s top levels requires major commitments to equipment and talent alike.

Not coincidentally, four of the five companies featured here were among the top 20 on Fortune’s 2024 list of America’s Most Innovative Companies, coproduced with data-gathering firm Statista—and Alphabet was No. 1.

This article appears in the April/May 2024 issue of Fortune with the headline, “The two pillars of Big Tech’s growth.”