AI Capital Cycle Monitor / March 2026

Is AI
Cooked Yet?

Updated: Q4'25 earnings
Next: Q1'26 (Apr/May)

The Vibes Index

Capex-weighted CEO/CFO sentiment. High = bullish, money flowing. Drops below 50 = cycle turning.

Potential Breaking Points

2026

CoreWeave $4.2B refinancing wall. OpenAI/Anthropic IPO filings expose audited burn rates. Capex at 90-94% of operating cash flow.

2027

First hyperscaler capex guidance cut. Nvidia circular financing loop tested by revenue deceleration. Power bottlenecks force impairment charges on idle GPUs.

2028+

Neocloud debt repricing if take-or-pay contracts shift to pay-as-you-go. Transformer supply catches up. Overcapacity becomes visible.

THE TURN

Vibes index drops below 50. Requires Jassy ($200B), Pichai ($180B), or Zuckerberg ($125B) to use the word "disciplined." OpenAI already blinked. Not there yet.

Full Quote Tape

Not investment advice. Each quote scored independently by three separate Claude Opus 4.6 instances with no shared context. Scores averaged across runs. Multiple quotes per company per quarter are averaged before capex-weighting, so no company is double-counted. Weights based on 2026 capex guidance, applied to all quarters as a proxy for relative spending power. Nvidia stockpile ratio from 10-Q. Foundation model net margin from reported and estimated financials. AGI ex Machina is cumulative AI capex minus end-user AI revenue since 2022.