The AI Compute Race Glossary Capital expenditure

Capital expenditure

What does “Capital expenditure” mean?

Capital expenditure

Spending on buildings and equipment, shortened to capex. Chapter 1.

From The AI Compute Race. Read the book

Where the book uses it

  • Chapter 1 — The Stakes

    What the race is for: the belief that a lead in AI can compound into a lasting advantage, how long such leads have actually lasted, and what a trillion dollars a year is being bet against.

Where the record uses it

Also discussed in

Sources that use it

  • Oracle Corporation, “Oracle Announces Q1 Results Driven by Triple Digit Growth in Cloud Infrastructure Revenues,” Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1, filed 10 September 2026, for the quarter ended 31 August 2026 (“a record Q1 operating cash flow of $23 billion, up 184%. Free cash flow was negative $5 billion for Q1”; the cash-flow statement gives “Net cash provided by operating activities” of 23,103 against “Capital expenditures” of 28,499, in millions of dollars, and the free-cash-flow table a negative figure in every quarter of fiscal 2026; the release subtracts customers’ prepayments of 11,363 from the capital expenditures for a non-GAAP net cash outlay of 17,966) In the Sources

Related terms

From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.

How to cite this page

Dryburgh, Lee S. “Capital expenditure.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/capital-expenditure (accessed 2026-11-01).

BibTeX

@misc{dryburgh-capital-expenditure-2026,
  author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
  title = {{Capital expenditure}},
  howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/capital-expenditure},
  note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}

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