What the cloud giants spend building AI capacity.
Capital expenditure by the largest cloud providers — servers, accelerators, buildings, power and network — is the clearest public measure of how much AI capacity is actually being built.
It is the demand signal behind chip revenue, and the figure that moves semiconductor shares on cloud earnings days even though no chipmaker reported anything.
Because it is capital, it lands on the balance sheet and depreciates for years, which is why the market watches the guided number as closely as the spent one.
Microsoft trades at 505.41, up 1.14% on the day. Its quarterly capital spending guidance is one of the few public numbers that reprices the whole AI supply chain within minutes.