Public companies launching AI share buybacks or capex shifts after Q1 2026$10 spent
$10.00 spent
company_name
ticker
country
announcement_date
capital_action
ai_linkage
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filing_type
Alphabet Inc.
NASDAQ:GOOGL
United States
2026-04-29
Raised 2026 capex guidance and dividend
Alphabet explicitly said its AI investments and full stack approach are driving performance, and CFO Anat Ashkenazi said the company raised 2026 CapEx guidance to $180-$190 billion because it is seeing "unprecedented internal and external demand for AI compute resources." The company also said the investment is to capture the AI opportunity.
Meta explicitly tied the higher capex outlook to AI investment. In prepared remarks, Mark Zuckerberg said, "we are increasing our infrastructure capex forecast for this year" and added that "every sign that we're seeing in our own work and across the industry gives us confidence in this investment" while discussing Meta's AI models, infrastructure, and custom silicon rollout.
Amazon directly said the year-over-year increase in purchases of property and equipment was primarily due to AI. The Q1 2026 earnings release states that the $59.3 billion increase in property and equipment spending "primarily reflects investments in artificial intelligence."
WD explicitly linked the dividend increase to AI-driven demand. In the same sentence announcing the 20% dividend increase, CEO Irving Tan said, "The demand drivers are clear: Virtually every AI workload, from training, inference, agentic AI to physical AI, creates data that is stored persistently and cost-efficiently on HDDs."
Micron directly tied the dividend increase and improved outlook to AI-driven memory demand. In the same overview, Micron said the "step-up in our results and outlook" came from "an increase in memory demand driven by AI," and added that AI has "fundamentally recast memory as a defining strategic asset in the AI era."
Nokia explicitly tied higher investment and capex to accelerating AI & Cloud demand. CEO Justin Hotard said, "We are increasing our growth assumption for Optical and IP Networks and we are investing to capture accelerating demand from AI & Cloud customers," and the report says 2026 capex will be higher primarily for added manufacturing capacity to support the Optical Networks growth outlook.
Teradyne explicitly linked the dividend increase to AI-related demand. Its release said record results were "driven by AI-related demand strength across compute segments and memory," and CEO Greg Smith added that about 70% of revenue was tied to AI-related demand and that robust AI-driven momentum would continue.
ASM explicitly said AI-led demand accelerated further and that customer investments in capacity are being driven by long-term AI infrastructure expansion. Its investor presentation also said it is committed to shareholder returns with a proposed dividend and new buyback while the semiconductor market is on an accelerated growth path driven by multi-year expansion in AI.
