The Case for and Against the Capex Supercycle

Watch the depreciation schedules, not just the capex line. Hyperscalers are quietly extending the useful life they assign to servers, which flatters near-term margins even as the underlying hardware ages faster in AI workloads than the accounting assumes. When those schedules snap back to reality, the earnings hit arrives all at once.

The second-order effects of cheaper tokens are where the real value migrates. As raw inference approaches commodity pricing, the durable businesses are the ones that own distribution, proprietary data, or an integrated workflow — not the ones reselling a thin wrapper over an API that anyone can call.

The interesting tell in a model launch is what the provider chooses not to charge for. Free tiers, aggressive rate limits, and bundled inference are competitive weapons aimed at locking in developers before switching costs exist. The pricing is a strategy document, and the giveaways say more about the roadmap than the benchmarks do.