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Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle have committed more than $3 trillion to future spending on AI data centres, leases, equipment and energy, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, with Alphabet alone above $1 trillion. Xcel Energy unveiled a $70 billion five-year capital plan that sets aside about $7 billion for data centres already under contract, and Exelon told investors it counts 11 gigawatts of high-probability load, most of it data centres in the Chicago area. At the other end of the market, Microsoft released the open weights of Mage-VL-Cowork, a 4-billion-parameter model that operates a computer through screen and terminal and is small enough to run on a personal machine.
Date: 2026-11-01
Updated: 2026-11-01 06:30
Status: LIVE
Broadcast
Bloomberg's tally puts the future commitments of five companies above $3 trillion, and $1.3 trillion of that is leases on buildings that in some cases will not be vacated for 30 years. The utilities are now writing those buildings into their plans: Xcel has $7 billion already earmarked and another $10 billion waiting on contracts, while Exelon says only a tenth of its 11 gigawatts arrives by 2028. The gap between what is signed and what is wired is where the next two years will be decided. Microsoft's release of a capable 4-billion-parameter agent is a reminder that some of this work can run on a laptop instead.
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Five of the largest technology companies have committed more than $3 trillion to future spending on AI data centres, leases, equipment and energy, Bloomberg reported on Saturday. Alphabet leads with more than $1 trillion, nearly eight times its total a year ago, followed by Meta with more than $800 billion.
-- Leases that run as long as 30 years lock the buildout into a handful of balance sheets for decades, and the spending has already pushed Alphabet and Meta into negative free cash flow.
2026-10-31 / Silicon Report (citing Bloomberg) / chip, energy / central / #alphabet-meta-microsoft-amazon-and-oracle-commit
Xcel Energy unveiled a five-year, $70 billion capital plan, up 17 percent from its previous $60 billion, that calls for 9.2 gigawatts of renewable generation, 2.3 gigawatts of storage and 3.3 gigawatts of gas. About $7 billion will serve data centres already under contract, and the company says it could spend more than $10 billion beyond the plan for the 4 gigawatts of data centres it expects to sign by the end of 2027.
-- A utility serving Minnesota, Colorado and Texas customers is now planning generation and transmission around a small number of very large computing sites, and who pays for that extra spending will show up in household bills.
2026-10-30 / Utility Dive / energy / central / #xcel-energy-unveils-70-billion-spending-plan-wit
Exelon told analysts on Thursday that it has identified 11 gigawatts of high-probability load growth through 2034, most of it data centres in ComEd's northern Illinois territory. Executives said only a small amount is in the current capital plan, about 10 percent should be online by 2028, and roughly three-quarters by 2034.
-- Exelon is asking developers to sign transmission security agreements so they, not existing ratepayers, cover the wires, which makes the speed of data-centre growth a question of who will post the collateral.
2026-10-30 / The Motley Fool (call transcript) / energy / central / #exelon-counts-11-gigawatts-of-high-probability-l
Microsoft released Mage-VL-Cowork under the Apache licence, a 4-billion-parameter vision-language model that works a computer through both on-screen clicks and a terminal inside a single policy. The company says it scores 66.0 percent on the OSWorld-Verified benchmark, the best result at its size, and community quantised copies appeared within a day.
-- An agent that can operate a desktop and fits in under 10 gigabytes means office automation need not be rented from a data centre by the hour.
2026-10-30 / Hugging Face / efficiency / local / #microsoft-releases-open-weights-for-mage-vl-cowo
Axis
local [##########################----] central
Score: 85
clusters still winning
0
The five largest buyers have now signed more than $3 trillion of future data-centre commitments, and utilities from Minnesota to Illinois are rewriting their capital plans around that demand, so money and power keep flowing to the largest sites. Microsoft's open 4-billion-parameter computer-use model is a genuine gain for machines people own, but it does not offset a commitment of that size; the score holds at 85.
Forces
| Force | Meter | Score | Pull | Note | ||
| CHIP / CAPEX |
|
98 | central | Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle have committed more than $3 trillion to data centres, leases, equipment and energy, according to Bloomberg; $1.3 trillion is future leases, some running 30 years, and $1.9 trillion is equipment and other orders. | ||
| ENERGY |
|
98 | central | Xcel Energy's $70 billion 2027-2031 plan includes about $7 billion for contracted data centres and leaves out the 4 gigawatts more it expects to sign by the end of 2027. Exelon counts 11 gigawatts of high-probability load, about 10 percent of it online by 2028. | ||
| EFFICIENCY |
|
78 | mixed | Microsoft's Mage-VL-Cowork, an Apache-licensed 4-billion-parameter model, scores 66.0 percent on the OSWorld-Verified computer-use test, the company says, and already circulates in quantised copies for local use. |
Line charts (0=local 100=central 2026-10-17 to 2026-11-01)
Market overlay (2026-10-03 to 2026-11-01)
Latest: BTC $77,829 / hashrate ~1078.38 EH/s / token markers avg $5.2583/M / axis 85. These lines are different units. We compare timing, not dollars-to-hashrate.
Not shown: GPU cloud $/hour, hub electricity, miner hashprice, or lab cost per token -- none of those are a clean public feed.
Power and list prices
BTC $77,829 / hashrate ~1078 EH/s. List-price gap (not a subsidy %): 123.1x list gap (blended) Mercury 3 -> Claude Fable 5.1 ($0.16/M to $20.00/M). (mempool.space + Coinbase/CoinGecko)
Marker prices (USD per 1M tokens; verified 2026-10-31; blended = (3*input + 1*output) / 4; -- = open/self-host or no single public list)
| # | Model | Org | CC | Weights | Tier | In | Out | Blend |
| 1 | Claude Sonnet 5 | Anthropic | US | closed undisclosed |
workhorse | $2.00 | $10.00 | $4.00 |
| 2 | GPT-5.5 | OpenAI | US | closed undisclosed |
flagship | $5.00 | $30.00 | $11.25 |
| 3 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | DeepSeek | CN | open ~284B total / ~13B active (MoE) |
commodity | $0.30 | $1.20 | $0.53 |
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