New data from Synergy Research Group shows that hyperscale operator CAPEX in the first quarter totaled just over $26 billion, dipping a little compared with the record-setting levels seen throughout 2018. Last year’s first quarter number was boosted by Google's $2.4 billion purchase of Manhattan real estate. Excluding that exceptional item, the Q1 CAPEX came in 2% down from the first quarter of 2018. In terms of hyperscale companies the numbers broke even, with ten companies seeing year-on-year growth and ten showing a decline. In aggregate capex for the last four quarters totaled $116 billion, 22% up from the preceding four quarters. The top five hyperscale spenders in Q1 were Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.
The hyperscale data is based on analysis of the CAPEX and data center footprint of 20 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, including the largest operators in IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, search, social networking, and e-commerce. Outside of the top five, other leading hyperscale spenders include Alibaba, Tencent, IBM, JD.com, and Baidu. Much of the hyperscale CAPEX goes towards building, expanding and equipping huge data centers, which have now grown in number to 458.