Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most revolutionary technology in a generation. Its ability to instantly generate text, images, videos, and even computer code could drive a productivity boom for businesses all over the world.

The industry is still in its infancy, but Wall Street's forecasts suggest AI could add anywhere between $7 trillion and $200 trillion to the global economy during the next decade. That's why technology giants are battling one another for AI supremacy and spending astronomical amounts of money on data center infrastructure and chips.

According to an estimate from investment bank Morgan Stanley, four technology giants alone could invest a combined $300 billion in capital expenditures (capex) in 2025. Driving that spending will be AI, and with Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) supplying the most advanced chips in the industry for AI development, its stock could also be the biggest winner from the spending boom.

In order to make "smarter" AI software, developers need to train more sophisticated large language models (LLMs). That requires more data and also more processing power, which is the expensive part.

Outside of cashed-up AI start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic, most businesses can't afford to build their own data centers. Instead, they rent computing capacity from tech giants that are building centralized infrastructure.

Based on public filings, here's how much some of those tech behemoths are allocating to capex, including AI infrastructure:

Chips are a massive component of that spending. During 2023, Nvidia's H100 graphics processing units (GPUs) were the go-to choice for AI development, granting the company a market share of 98%. They remain a hot seller today, but Nvidia just started shipping its new Blackwell GPUs, which offer a substantial leap in performance.