Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTRishabh MishraSat, July 25, 2026 at 1:31 AM GMT+2 5 min readBenzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is defending Alphabet Inc.'s massive artificial intelligence capital expenditures, likening the tech giant's strategy to the 1998 internet boom where companies must "push in all their chips" to secure dominance.Echoes of the 1998 Tech BoomResponding to an X user questioning if Alphabet's capital spending was simply "building future pickle ball courts," Cuban drew direct parallels to the late 90s."Kind of like 1998 and buying all the servers and bandwidth we could find," Cuban posted. "We needed to have more than anyone else… And we did."Don't Miss:A single bad hire can set a startup back years. Here are the 5 hires founders most often misjudge — and whyStill Learning the Market? These 50 Must-Know Terms Can Help You Catch Up FastCuban argues the AI race requires similar aggression. He emphasized that no company wants to achieve market dominance only to "run out of capacity." To prevent this bottleneck, tech giants must "push in all their chips and commit to building as much capacity as they can," he explained.Kind of like 1998 and buying all the servers and bandwidth we could find to stream audio and video.We needed to have more than anyone else, so we could stream more than anyone else. And we did. We dominated streaming and it wasn't close.Same thing is happening with… https://t.co/1L7B7aauMw— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) July 23, 2026Wall Street Debates the AI BillCuban's defense arrives as Alphabet's decision to raise its 2026 CapEx guidance from $195 billion to $205 billion sparks mixed reactions among analysts.The Future Fund's Gary Black warned this aggressive spending could "trigger a new CapEx arms race," while CNBC's Jim Cramer noted investor anxiety over Alphabet's nearly $6 billion in negative free cash flow. Dan Ives added that hyperscaler spending remains the "laser focus" for tech investors.Trending: Avoid the #1 Investing Mistake: How Your 'Safe' Holdings Could Be Costing You Big TimeConversely, Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management argued the market is overreacting to fractional misses in Search margins. Pointing to Google Cloud's 82% year-over-year revenue jump, Munster declared, "The Cloud number is the most important number."Strategist Shay Boloor echoed this optimism, noting Google Cloud's $514 billion backlog proves "demand is already translating into insane fundamentals."Outpacing CapacityOverall, Alphabet's second quarter revenue hit $119.80 billion, beating estimates. Driven by demand for AI infrastructure, Cloud revenue alone reached $24.77 billion.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info