Back in the day there were a lot of things that appeared not to be about capex because the quality of the capital was improving so quickly. Computers became obsolete after a year or two. Then the major exponential trends finished running their course and computers stayed useful for longer. At that point, suddenly AWS popped up and it turned out computing was all about massive capital investments.

AI will be similar. In the fullness of time, for the major players it'll be all about capex. The question is really just what time horizon that equilibrium will form.