According to a financial framework published by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) require a combined $1 trillion in revenue between 2028 and 2030 to achieve a 15% return on invested capital for artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The analysis indicates that the three companies have a total cloud service backlog of $1.69 trillion as of the second calendar quarter of 2026. This backlog represents 59% of the $1 trillion revenue target required to meet the 15% Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) threshold.
Microsoft leads the group with a reported backlog of $678 billion, followed by Amazon at $513.9 billion and Google at $496 billion. To meet their respective shares of the revenue requirement, Goldman’s analysis suggests Microsoft would need to convert about 39.6% of its current backlog into revenue, compared with 67.7% for Amazon and 77.7% for Google.
The underlying framework calculates these returns assuming 29 gigawatts of implied capacity added, factoring in utilization rates scaling to 85% by the year 2030. Futurum Equites analyst Shay Boloor noted that the current backlog covers just 60% of the required revenue, suggesting the AI buildout appears less speculative with potential upside if utilization or pricing moves higher.
