Sources and methodology
What these numbers measure, where they come from, and where their limits are.
Data sources
The Capex Report reads company 10-Q and 10-K filings from SEC EDGAR with its own extract, and the public series from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Energy Information Administration. Company pages link to their SEC filing history and provide the underlying data file.
The dataset was last updated on October 31, 2026. A data refresh is not a new filing: each company page separately labels its reporting period and filing date. Updates appear when the site’s data pipeline is run and the site is rebuilt.
The extract uses the most recently filed value for a period, so restatements can change history. Missing or quarantined values are withheld rather than estimated. The underlying data files include reconciliation details.
Definitions
- Capital expenditures (capex)
- Cash purchases of property, plant, and equipment, taken from the company’s structured cash flow statement. This is company-wide investment. It is not an estimate of AI-only spending, and it does not necessarily include equipment acquired under finance leases.
- Operating cash flow
- Net cash provided by operating activities, as reported in the cash flow statement. This measures cash generation before capital spending and financing activity.
- Free cash flow
- Operating cash flow less capital spending, using the upstream extract’s free cash flow field when available. Separately labeled earnings-release figures may use a company-specific definition, such as capex net of proceeds and incentives.
- Trailing twelve months (TTM)
- The sum of a company’s latest four usable reported quarters. TTM change compares those four quarters with the preceding four. Different companies can have different period ends, so a combined TTM figure is not a synchronized calendar-year total.
- Capex / operating cash flow
- Capital expenditures divided by operating cash flow for the latest reported quarter. A value above 100% means spending exceeded cash generated by operations. The ratio is left blank when operating cash flow is zero or negative.
- Change in long-term debt
- The change in the reported long-term debt balance from the preceding quarter. This is a balance-sheet proxy, not net cash borrowing: maturities, reclassification, foreign exchange, acquisitions, and other adjustments can affect it.
Reporting periods
Quarterly cash flows may be calculated by subtracting successive year-to-date disclosures. Fourth quarters may be derived as the full year less the first nine months. Each company’s fiscal labels are retained in the detailed statement.
The overview chart groups fiscal periods by the calendar quarter in which they end. Oracle’s February, May, August, and November period ends are grouped with peers ending in March, June, September, and December. Only quarters with usable figures for all five hyperscalers appear. This aligns the display; it does not make the reporting windows identical.
The company explorer always shows each company’s latest usable quarter. These rows mix reporting periods. Their sum is a snapshot of covered companies, not an estimate for a single calendar quarter.
When an earnings release arrives before the structured filing, its figures may appear in a separately labeled, shaded statement column. They are excluded from the main ledger and historical chart until available in the structured extract.
Coverage and limits
Coverage includes 21 public companies across five infrastructure layers. This is a selected research universe, not a complete census of the AI economy.
Company-wide capital expenditures include investments unrelated to AI. Do not interpret the sum as total AI infrastructure spending. Suppliers’ capex measures their own asset investment; it is not customer spending on their equipment or their AI revenue.
The site does not provide forecasts, market prices, or investment ratings. A company spending beyond operating cash flow may fund the difference through existing cash, debt, equity, or other sources; the spending ratio alone does not identify which.