Webscale Market Tracker 2Q 2025: Webscale Infrastructure Spending Shatters Records in 2Q25 - ResearchAndMarkets.com

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Webscale Market Tracker, 2Q25" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Cloud drove previous webscale surges, but investor excitement around artificial intelligence is driving this one. Unfortunately, this latest surge has been firmly in bubble territory for several quarters and there is significant downside risk for a crash. AI spend has been propped up by a combination of US government subsidies, mass market consumer interest, a self-reinforcing loop between buyers and sellers, and AI hypemasters eager to be first - even if they have no idea what benefits this may deliver, if any.

Webscale's AI-driven infrastructure buildout keeps breaking records. In 2Q25, the 25 companies in our Webscale Tracker generated $722 billion (B) in revenue (+14.1% YoY), spent $122B on capex (+77.0%), poured $93B into R&D (+17.8%), and held $629B in cash (flat YoY) against $567B in debt (+8.9%). Net PP&E surged 38.9% YoY to $1.111 trillion. Headcount hit 4.28M (+1.2% YoY).

Revenue: Growth Concentrated in the Big Four

2Q25 revenue hit $721.7B (+14.1% YoY), pushing annualized sales to $2.82 trillion (T). Nebius, CoreWeave and Yandex posted the fastest growth, but the first two are new companies and the third is impacted by recent USD-RUB exchange rate fluctuations. The heavy lifting came from Amazon (revenues up 13.3% YoY to $167.7B), Alphabet (+13.8% to $96.4B), Microsoft (+18.1% to $76.4B), JD.Com (+22.5% to $49.3B), and Meta (FB) (+21.6% to $47.5B).

Incidentally, JD.Com may be removed from our database at some point since it has deconsolidated its cloud unit and has no clear plans to reverse this decision. Its energy intensity is relatively high, like other webscalers, but it spends just over 1% of revenues on capex; the company is unlikely to challenge China's leading webscalers with established data center footprints (Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei).

At the other end, two companies saw revenues fall between 2Q24 and 2Q25: Fujitsu, down 2.6% YoY to $5.2B as it exited some European markets; and Baidu, down 3.5% YoY to $4.5B due to a significant drop in advertising revenue. Alibaba's revenues grew only 1.9% YoY to $34.2B, due to recent divestitures of Sun Art and Intime, which lowered Alibaba's revenue base.

Employment: Flat Growth, Automation Looms

Webscale employment hit 4.28M, up 1.2% YoY. The big recent story is Alibaba, whose early 2025 spinoffs caused its headcount to drop dramatically. In 2Q25, its employee total was 123.7K, down 38% YoY. By contrast, JD.Com has been expanding headcount, ending 2Q25 with around 625K employees, up 15% YoY. Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet all grew modestly YoY in 2Q25, while Microsoft stayed flat.

There will be occasional modest swings up in webscale headcount, but automation and robotics are gaining ground, especially in logistics. We expect modest headcount gains in 2025, then a steady decline.

Regional Trends: Asia Rebounds

Asia-Pacific's drag is easing: for a few quarters, a weak Chinese market meant that Asia was a drag on global growth. That has reversed. Global revenues grew 14% YoY in 2Q25, and all four regions saw growth rates within a couple of percentage points of this average.

With strong government backing, Tencent and Alibaba are poised to accelerate Asia's momentum through 2026. Xiaomi also adds support for Asia's growth. It is having export market success with its devices and starting to invest in data centers and AI, with potential for much more to come.

Key Topics Covered:

• Report highlights
• Outlook
• Analysis
• Key Stats
• Company Drilldown
• Company Benchmarking
• Regional Breakouts
• Raw Data
• Exchange Rates

Companies Featured

• Alibaba
• Alphabet
• Altaba
• Amazon
• Apple
• Baidu
• ChinaCache
• Cognizant
• CoreWeave
• eBay
• Fujitsu
• HPE
• IBM
• JD.COM
• Kuaishou
• LinkedIn
• Meta (FB)
• Microsoft
• Nebius
• Oracle
• SAP
• Tencent
• Twitter
• Xiaom
• Xiaomi
• Yandex

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/wmvvt8

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