You only get one shot at AI supremacy. Or that’s the thinking that seems to have taken hold among Big Tech executives. Their artificial intelligence strategy has a “you only live once” feel: shovel in as much money as possible, hope to come out on top, and if you fail, at least you tried.

Meta Platforms more so than most. Founder Mark Zuckerberg told analysts on Wednesday that he is spending to meet “the most optimistic cases”. That means the Facebook parent investing “notably” more than $100bn next year, twice what analysts were pencilling in for 2026 this time a year ago, according to LSEG.

The resulting $160bn drop in Meta’s market value reflects that, for investors, this logic is doubtful. There is no reason to think investing a lot ensures success — witness Zuckerberg’s languishing Metaverse project — so higher sums just up the chances of big writedowns. Google is spending even more than Meta on data centres but has a cloud computing business, so it can rent what it doesn’t use to third parties.