Google's parent company Alphabet continues to invest heavily in AI: will invest $5.8 billion in Belgium over the next two years

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, on Wednesday local time, Alphabet (GOOGL.US), the parent company of the American search engine and artificial intelligence giant Google, announced that it will invest approximately 5 billion euros (about 5.8 billion USD) in cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Belgium, a core market in Europe, over the next two years. This move signifies Alphabet's commitment to expanding its artificial intelligence software and hardware ecosystem globally. Recent research reports released by Wall Street financial giants indicate that Google's capital expenditure is expected to reach 111 billion USD by 2026, a year-on-year increase of 29%, with an additional 25 billion USD compared to the previous year. Citigroup also forecasts a compound annual growth rate of about 26% from 2024 to 2029.

In a recently published blog post, Alphabet stated that this investment includes the expansion of its large data center campus in Saint-Ghislain, primarily for infrastructure closely related to AI, and will create 300 new full-time positions. The company also announced that it has reached new power supply agreements with European energy and power system suppliers Eneco, Luminus, and Renner to build new onshore wind farms and provide clean energy supply systems for the data centers.

Alphabet added in the blog: "This is an extraordinary moment for innovation in the European market and for its digital and economic growth in the future. Our Google is deepening its roots in Belgium and across Europe, investing in local residents to unlock significant economic growth opportunities for the region and help ensure that the European continent remains at the forefront of technology and AI."

Reportedly, this latest announcement comes as Alphabet prepares to expand its cloud computing and AI infrastructure investment in the Indian market to 10 billion USD. The company also recently stated that it plans to invest 4 billion USD in Arkansas, USA, to build new large data centers by 2027, and plans to invest approximately 5 billion GBP in the UK market.

It is understood that during the earnings conference call for the second quarter in July, Alphabet's management raised the company's full-year capital expenditure forecast by 10 billion USD to 85 billion USD, primarily for high-performance AI server clusters (based on Google's self-developed TPU and NVIDIA AI GPU and other AI accelerator server hardware) and supporting infrastructure related to data center networks/power. At that time, Alphabet indicated that due to strong demand from large customers for cloud computing services and cloud-based AI inference computing services, as well as other growth opportunities, capital expenditure in 2026 would be higher than in 2025, but no specific figures were provided.

Strong demand for AI computing power! Wall Street bets heavily on the "AI cash-burning war" led by tech giants

According to Wall Street financial giants Citigroup, Loop Capital, and Wedbush, the global artificial intelligence infrastructure investment wave centered on AI computing hardware is far from over and is only at the beginning. Driven by an unprecedented "storm of demand for AI inference computing power," this round of AI investment is expected to reach between 2 trillion to 3 trillion USD NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has predicted that by 2030, AI infrastructure spending will reach between $3 trillion and $4 trillion, with the scale and scope of projects providing significant long-term growth opportunities for NVIDIA. The demand for AI computing power driven by generative AI applications and AI agents at the inference end can be described as "vast as the stars and the sea," and is expected to drive the AI computing infrastructure market to continue showing exponential growth. Huang believes that "AI inference systems" will be the largest source of revenue for NVIDIA in the future.

Recent research reports released by Wall Street financial giants generally show that the wave of AI infrastructure investment and construction led by AI leaders like OpenAI and large U.S. tech giants is in a phase of extreme acceleration, pushing the entire AI computing industry chain to remain one of the most prosperous in the world. This is why the stock prices of AI computing industry leaders such as NVIDIA, TSMC, Broadcom, Micron Technology, and SK Hynix have repeatedly reached historical highs. Latest statistics indicate that global AI startups, including OpenAI, have raised a record $192.7 billion, largely indicating that the global AI "burn rate war" is still in full swing, highlighting that the bull market trajectory of the AI computing industry chain is far from over.

As the demand for AI computing power driven by generative artificial intelligence and AI agents continues to exceed supply, and with the accelerated iteration of Google's AI products, Citigroup has recently raised its capital expenditure forecast for Alphabet for 2026 and beyond. Citigroup expects that Alphabet's capital expenditure in 2026 will reach approximately $111 billion, higher than the $85 billion projected by Alphabet's management for 2025. According to Citigroup's latest calculations, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of Alphabet's capital expenditure from 2024 to 2029 is expected to reach 26%.

According to Citigroup's research report, the usage of AI tokens in Google's flagship AI application—Gemini—has increased to 980 trillion times per month by June 2025, far exceeding the 480 trillion times in April. Citigroup stated that demand for Google Cloud services has also surged significantly, with new customer quarterly growth of 28% and the number of large contracts over $250 million doubling year-on-year; Citigroup expects that the number of monthly active users of Gemini may approach 500 million in September, second only to ChatGPT