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keeda • today at 3:54 AM • 0 replies • view on HN

Well, good thing the tech giants have aggregate RPO (Remaining Performance Obligations, also known as "backlogs") -- that is, money committed to be spent by customers over the next 3 - 6 years -- of $2.33T.

Sure 2.33T is less than 3.2T but these RPOs were $0.5T in 2022, and have been growing YoY at rates of anything from 84% (Microsoft) to 390% (Google.) Microsoft and Google alone are expected to recognize about $0.5T of that revenue over the next 12 - 24 months.

Is the CapEx and debt ("hidden" or otherwise) growing faster than the RPOs? Eyeballing the numbers, maybe? But generally service providers try to stay ahead of the demand curve rather than behind, so...

Is there concentration risk in the customers? Yes, OpenAI and Anthropic seem to be like $1T of these RPO's? That still leaves $1.3T of other demand.

Is there demand? I mean, RPOs come with a commitment, and have you seen the cloud revenue growth numbers recently??

As another comment here points out, is it really wise to assume the tech giants are NOT financially savvy enough to know what they're doing? Some of these, especially Amazon and Microsoft and yes even Alphabet, are well-known for being highly fiscally disciplined. This is a huge bet for them, even an existential bet, but maybe it's because this is an existential kinda situation.