Semiconductor manufacturers are signaling a major infrastructure shift. One leading chipmaker just announced plans to dramatically escalate capital expenditure—ramping from approximately $41 billion in 2025 up to potentially $56 billion by 2026. That's a stunning $15+ billion jump in a single year.

What's really happening here? The industry is making a clear statement about where AI is headed. The focus isn't just on building powerful training infrastructure anymore. Instead, massive resources are now flowing toward running inference at scale—keeping AI models continuously operational once they're deployed.

Even more revealing: roughly 10–20% of those expansion dollars are being specifically allocated toward this inference capability build-out. When you see capital allocation at this scale moving in one direction, it's not just business as usual. It's the market telling you exactly which way the computing winds are blowing.