Expects capital expenditures from four Big Tech companies to exceed $400 billion next year

Those numbers might be conservative, further fueling the debate over AI returns.

What about the returns?

So far, AI has mainly delivered in terms of generating cost savings, according to the Citi team. Companies have found ways to reduce their expenses by employing AI for customer service, coding assistance and “knowledge retrieval”

 — and those three use cases could together result in $275 billion of annual cost savings, based on conservative estimate inputs, the Citi analysts noted.

 “Put simply, we believe AI’s impact on innovation and efficiency will yield returns proportionate to the scale of investment,” the analysts wrote.

MarketeWatch 27 August 2025

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-400-billion-bonanza-as-ai-spending-estimates-move-higher-so-do-the-stakes-for-investors-a6742a00