Shares in America's five biggest technology companies jumped on Wednesday, as investors bet that a Democrat-controlled Congress would put the brakes on their AI spending spree.
Amazon rose as much as 8% and Microsoft gained 7%. Alphabet climbed 6%, Meta added 4% and Apple rose more than 6%.
That put the group on course to add nearly $1 trillion to its combined stock market value.
It is not often that investors celebrate the idea of companies being stopped from spending money.
But the market believes Democratic control raises the chances of tougher environmental, energy and planning rules that could slow the construction of data centres.
That could ease the pressure from more than $740 billion of planned spending this year at Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft.
Cash going out
The spending has already taken a heavy toll on free cash flow, the money left over after running the business and investing in it.
The combined free cash flow of Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle swung to a $14 billion deficit in the first nine months of 2026.
A year earlier, they had a $143.5 billion surplus.
Alphabet burned through $9.1 billion in its latest quarter, while Amazon's free cash flow over the past 12 months fell to minus $42.4 billion.
Microsoft was the exception.
It generated $18.6 billion of free cash flow in the quarter, despite spending $45.2 billion on new equipment and buildings.
Apple has spent far less on AI infrastructure than its rivals, which helped explain why its shares outperformed.
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