David Cahn

Context: Multi-year framing whose horizon runs to mid-2027; revisit annually. The capex side moved further out of reach this cycle: analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg put 2026 capital spending by Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta alone at about $724 billion, rising to nearly $950 billion in 2027, and Moody's projects roughly $785 billion in 2026 across six companies. The revenue side remains far below on every filed measure — OpenAI's audited 2025 revenue was $13.07 billion, Microsoft's last disclosed AI figure is a $37 billion annual run-rate rather than GAAP revenue, and the firmest AI-adjacent GAAP disclosure this cycle is Google Cloud's $24.768 billion quarter, in a segment that is not AI-only. The gap Cahn described has widened rather than closed, but the deadline for judging it has not arrived.