Anatomy of a Capex Melt-Up:

Hyper 5 spent $1.1 trillion on capex in the past five years, with $5.3 trillion more expected by 2030

The AI build-out has reached historically extreme investment intensity and unprecedented concentration, but it has not yet developed the financing characteristics that made the dot-com build-out fragile. Where the dot-com carriers were largely pre-revenue or unprofitable, funding a fiber build-out almost entirely with debt, the Hyper 5 are profitable companies funding the build-out almost entirely from their own cash flow, at least so far.

Join S&P Global Market Intelligence for this 30-minute webinar on the AI-driven capex cycle and its next phase. We'll set out the signals to watch as the build-out develops including:

• Whether capex exceeds operating cash flow
• Whether the financing mix continues to shift toward debt
• Whether the cash/capex ratio falls through its 2000 starting level
• Whether AI demand materializes on a normal timeline.

We'll also showcase a live GenAI research agent. Using a Snowflake-hosted LLM interface, it combines S&P Global's Fundamental Powerhouse data with context from SEC filings, machine-readable earnings call transcripts, and our own quantitative research into a single AI-powered research workflow that updates the analysis live.

What we will cover:

• How today's investment intensity and concentration compare with previous cycle peaks
• The scale of the AI build-out driven by the Hyper 5 (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle)
• How this cycle differs from the dot-com era: profitable, cash-funded hyperscalers versus pre-revenue, debt-funded telecom carriers
• The signals to watch, including capex exceeding operating cash flow and a shift toward debt funding
• Whether enterprise adoption of generative AI is materializing quickly enough to justify the current level of investment
• A demo of the GenAI research agent that updates this analysis live

Speakers

Daniel Sandberg

Global Head of Quantitative Research & Solutions
S&P Global Market Intelligence

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Liam Hynes

Head of New Product Development – Public Markets
S&P Global Market Intelligence

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