Microsoft CFO: About 75% of Capex Goes to Short-Lived Assets, Mainly CPUs and GPUs

The disclosure reframes AI infrastructure spending as a depreciation race: if most capex is tied to chips with short useful lives, earnings pressure depends less on demand than on how quickly those assets must be written down. The RPO conversion figure adds a second timing signal, showing how much contracted cloud demand is near-term versus deferred. For anyone tracking hyperscaler economics, the open question is whether revenue recognition keeps pace with the depreciation schedule these short-lived assets impose.