AI Spending Has Gone From $140 Billion to $740 Billion in 3 Years, and Ackman Is Buying

Bill Ackman says AI hyperscalers' revenue will blow past expectations even as capex jitters rise

The billionaire investor said that, while suppliers of the AI buildout have outperformed this year, the hyperscalers are poised to keep growing revenue.

AI Spending Has Gone From $140 Billion to $740 Billion in 3 Years, and Ackman Is Buying

Bill Ackman is betting billions that Big Tech's ballooning data center budgets are a profit engine rather than a cash drain, but the math behind his conviction rests on assumptions that could quietly unravel long after the spending stops.

Ackman’s AI Data Center Model Delivers 9%–15% Returns at Lower Margins

New York, November 3, 2026, 15:07 (EST) Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square (NYSE:PS) has put numbers behind its defense of artificial intelligence spending. Its November 2 shareholder letter models annual pretax operating returns of 15%–25% for new data center capacity. The result assumes a 50% incremental operating margin. A TechStock² sensitivity calculation cuts that margin to…

Ackman’s Pershing Square Sees Wall Street Underestimating Returns From Big Tech’s AI Spending

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square argues that Wall Street is overemphasizing the cost of artificial intelligence infrastructure and underestimating the revenue and earnings those investments could generate. In its third-quarter shareholder letter, the investment firm said analyst forecasts reflect sharply higher capital spending by Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google without fully accounting for the potential payoff. Pershing Square’s investment thes…

Pershing Square Models 15% to 25% Returns on AI Data Centers

The firm’s scenario assumes $40 billion to $50 billion in build costs per gigawatt, $15 billion to $20 billion in annual revenue and a 50% incremental operating margin.