There is a respectable bull case that benefits eventually grow faster than capital expenditure, and it does not depend on optimism. It depends on arithmetic. The trouble is that the same arithmetic reduces the entire thesis to a single contested number, and that number is currently being attacked by the man who shorted the last bubble.

The Mechanical Case Is Stronger Than the Hype Case

Strip away the cheerleading and the bull argument is structural. Capex is a step function: compute, data centers, substations, and grid interconnects are sunk before a dollar of inference revenue arrives. Monetization is an S-curve that begins only once capacity is utilized. The two curves are offset in time by construction, which means peak capex intensity is not the steady state of the benefit-to-cost ratio. It is the trough. The ratio improves mechanically the moment spending shifts from building capacity to running it, even if technological progress stopped entirely.

The dominant worry about the AI buildout is a timing mismatch: roughly $700 billion of hyperscaler capital expenditure committed in 2026, against application revenues that critics call nascent. The bear frames this as a financing problem waiting to happen. The bull case is narrower and more mechanical, and it is worth stating in its strongest form: the capex curve and the revenue curve are shaped to cross, and the crossover is arriving now rather than at the end of the decade.