Ewout Steenbergen, CFO of Booking Holdings, stated at Fortune’s AIQ Summit that hyperscalers investing in large language models lack clear projections for return on investment. He noted that these companies are primarily driven by the fear of falling behind competitors rather than concrete financial data.
JPMorgan forecasts that capital expenditure on AI will reach $800 billion in 2026 and $1.1 trillion in 2027. This spending is expected to consume approximately 93% of hyperscalers' operating cash flow in 2026, a significant increase from 33% in 2023.
Morningstar estimates a payback period of three to five years for AI infrastructure, suggesting that returns must materialize before 2030. While hyperscalers bear the infrastructure risk, companies like Booking Holdings focus on deploying AI for specific tasks, such as travel discovery and customer support tools launched in 2025.
