Amazon, Microsoft, and Google lock multi-year GPU campuses before power arrives

SEATTLE — The three largest cloud companies are behaving like developers who pre-lease a tower before the elevator shaft is poured. GPU campuses are being contracted against power interconnection dates that sit two and three years out.

Finance chiefs said the alternative — waiting for a firm megawatt date before ordering accelerators — is worse, because the accelerators themselves have queues. Capital is being asked to sit in land, deposits, and long-lead electrical gear.

That is why cloud capex guidance keeps surprising to the upside even when utilization on last year's clusters looks merely fine. The spend is not about last year's model. It is about not missing 2028.