The Economist： Top 5 big labs will spend a huge $800 Bn this year real cash on AI infrastructure.

But their profit statements hardly notice these investments， since depreciation begins only after the assets are built， and then happens slowly.

When a company buys AI servers， GPUs， buildings， power systems， and networking equipment， accounting treats those as assets， not normal expenses.

So the profit statement does not show the full $800B hit right away.

But the cashflow statement shows the truth more directly： the money has already left the company.

The scary part is the scale： these firms may spend around 40% of their revenue on capital expenditure this year.