Record Q4 2025 results show AI is already driving revenues at the biggest tech companies, but the scale of investment is raising concerns. Meta, Alphabet and Amazon plan to spend an amount equivalent to roughly half of Poland’s GDP this year on AI infrastructure—hundreds of billions of dollars on data centres, chips and servers. The market is already issuing its first bills: hardware and semiconductors are benefiting from the boom, while software is starting to struggle. The technology that was supposed to be its gold mine is increasingly questioning the foundations of its business.
The earnings season for the fourth quarter has so far been favourable for technology companies. According to LSEG data, profits in the sector rose on average by 31%, revenues increased by 20%, and as many as 95% of companies that reported positively surprised the market. Within the group of the seven largest technology firms—the Magnificent 7—revenues are growing dynamically for all companies except Tesla. Apple recorded the best quarter in its history, Meta’s revenues rose by nearly 24%, Alphabet accelerated in the cloud segment, Microsoft remains a pillar of enterprise software, beating Wall Street expectations, and Amazon is positioning itself as an AI infrastructure provider. Even Tesla continues to surprise with its narrative about shifting from automotive toward AI and robotics, although for now this remains largely in the realm of promises.
Something, however, has changed in the market. We are increasingly seeing companies that beat their forecasts, yet their share prices fall. Ambitious guidance may be met with a negative market reaction, and record investment spending is no longer treated as an opportunity but as a potential risk to future profits. This is not a shift away from AI—it is a change in valuation criteria.
Artificial intelligence was viewed in recent years as the main engine of market growth. It is now becoming primarily an accelerator of capital expenditure. In 2026, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon are heading toward combined infrastructure spending of nearly $520 billion, compared with $239 billion in 2025. This year alone, the investment outlays of these three companies will reach a spectacular level equal to half of Poland’s GDP.
The development of AI is also shifting increasingly from the capabilities of software toward hard infrastructure—data centres, servers, networks, chips and energy. Investors are clearly looking more closely not only at the scale of AI spending, but also at its quality. A dollar invested in areas that accelerate growth and improve margins is perceived as a positive growth investment. A dollar allocated to building capacity that is still waiting for demand is increasingly seen as a risky bet.
The year 2026 is bringing a clear cooling of sentiment around software companies. SAP has been about 15.3% down since the start of the year, while Microsoft—despite good results—has lost around 13.5%, and these are not random moves. The market is beginning to ask whether, in the AI era, the existing business models of software companies are as resilient as before. Artificial intelligence can now generate code, automate tasks and simplify processes that until recently required complex and expensive systems. This raises concerns that some of the functions customers paid for through licences or subscriptions may become cheaper or even unnecessary.
At the same time, these companies must incur enormous costs to develop and maintain AI infrastructure in order not to fall behind. In Microsoft’s case, investors reacted nervously despite solid financial results, because rising revenues are accompanied by rising spending and questions about the speed of return on these investments. SAP, meanwhile, faces doubts about whether new AI tools could weaken its position over the long term. As a result, software has entered a difficult moment: it must finance transformation while defending margins against a technology that may change the rules of the game faster than the market had been prepared to assume.
Polish investors still believe in the long-term potential of AI and the technology sector. According to the eToro Individual Investor Pulse survey, 41% of Polish investors currently hold technology stocks, compared with 37% a year earlier. Moreover, technology is the sector in which the most investors plan to increase their exposure—21% declare a high probability of raising their allocation in 2026. By comparison, real estate stocks rank second (16%) and financial stocks third (12%).
Despite this optimism, the S&P 500 Technology index has remained in negative territory since the beginning of the year, suggesting that selection is becoming increasingly important. The market is clearly rewarding companies with predictable results, a reasonable investment strategy and a strong balance sheet, rather than broad passive exposure to the entire sector.
Source: https://managerplus.pl/hardware-pozera-software-nowa-faza-boomu-na-sztuczna-inteligencje
