Operating cash flow, the cash a company’s operations produce before capital expenditure. The Scorecard.
From The AI Compute Race. Read the book
Where the record uses it
- Scorecard indicator Hyperscalers’ Q1 operating cash flow (OCF) / cash capex
- Scorecard indicator Microsoft Jun. quarter
Sources that use it
- AI investment boom puts Big Tech’s free cash flow under pressure, Reuters, 22 July 2026 (LSEG consensus: 2025→2027 capex +$534 billion vs operating cash flow +$340 billion; Microsoft quarter OCF $35.8 billion vs capex incl. finance leases $37.5 billion; Oracle FY2026 capex $55.7 billion vs OCF $32 billion). In the Sources
- Isabel Juniewicz, “Hyperscaler capex is on trend to outpace their cash inflows by the end of 2026,” Epoch AI data insight, 16 June 2026 (aggregate cash capex across Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle on track to overtake operating cash flow around Q3 2026; CY2026 Q1: OCF $157.9 billion, cash capex $148.4 billion; on the crossover: “aggregate cash capex across hyperscalers is on track to overtake operating cash flow around Q3 2026” (the opening paragraph)). In the Sources
Related terms
From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.
How to cite this page
Dryburgh, Lee S. “OCF.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/ocf (accessed 2026-11-01).
BibTeX
@misc{dryburgh-ocf-2026,
author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
title = {{OCF}},
howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
year = {2026},
url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/ocf},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}