Mission Critical Weekly
Cost insights on semiconductor fabs and data centers.
Week of October 26 – October 30, 2026
What's behind the moves
Earnings week cost the ten builders about $768 billion. The six data center names lost $652 billion (-5.2%) and the four chipmakers lost $116 billion (-2.7%). Two companies did most of the damage: Alphabet and Intel. Microsoft is now the largest company on our list, Samsung moved past Micron, and Oracle moved past Intel.
Alphabet (-12.6%) fell that much on Thursday alone. Revenue rose 25% to $127.6 billion and Google Cloud doubled to $30.7 billion, but free cash flow was negative $9.1 billion for the quarter. Capital spending was $51.4 billion, and about 35% of technical infrastructure spending went to data center buildings, roughly $18 billion in one quarter. Alphabet held its 2026 capex range at $195 to $205 billion and said 2027 capex will "increase significantly." Motley Fool transcript
Intel (-24.4%) dropped 29% on Friday. Q3 beat, with data center revenue up about 80% to $7.3 billion, but Q4 guidance fell short on revenue, margin and earnings. Intel blamed a weaker PC market and an early-October accident that shut a fab in Israel for about two weeks. For builders, the call was better than the stock: gross capex is on track for about $20 billion this year, will be "up strongly" in 2027, and management is looking at ways to speed up the Ohio build. Intel Q3 call summary
Amazon (-3.1%) spent $75.9 billion on capex in Q3, is on track for about $220 billion in 2026, and expects to spend "meaningfully more" in 2027. AWS grew 39% to $46 billion with a $578 billion backlog. CEO Andy Jassy said AWS capacity for 2027 is "largely sold out." Motley Fool transcript
Microsoft (-0.5%) held up best among the hyperscalers. Azure grew 48%, capex including finance leases was $45.2 billion, and Microsoft guided to more than $50 billion this quarter. It brought 24 new data centers online and said spending would have been higher if some third-party capacity had arrived on time. Data Studios
Oracle (+3.6%) jumped as much as 14% on Wednesday after its investor day. Oracle plans to add 7 gigawatts of capacity over the next couple of years, passing 10 gigawatts by the end of fiscal 2028. It expects free cash flow to turn positive late in fiscal 2028 and reach $30 billion in fiscal 2029, and it capped new outside funding at $20 billion through May 2030. TNW
Samsung (+4.4%) posted a record ₩107.4 trillion operating profit, said its 2027 HBM supply is sold out, and raised 2026 capex to ₩84.4 trillion. Meta (-4.3%) and TSMC (-3.0%) slid with the group. Micron and CoreWeave ended slightly higher after volatile weeks.
Why it matters for builders: no one cut. Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft all said 2027 spending goes up, and Oracle laid out 7 gigawatts of new capacity. Investors punished the cash burn, not the plans. Expect 2027 to bring more starts than 2026, all competing for the same electrical gear and the same crews.
Electrical and cooling gear now takes 12 to 18 months. Panelists at Bisnow's Data Center Investment Conference in Dallas put switchgear, UPS systems and chillers at 12 to 18 months, backup generators at more than a year, structural steel at about a year, and transformers at up to three years. Gas turbines for on-site power can take a decade or more. Bisnow
What that means on a schedule: a project that buys out electrical and mechanical gear after design development is already behind. Release long-lead packages early, and carry escalation from bid to delivery, not just to award.
Copper was flat at $6.48/lb, up 0.2% on the week.
No new producer price data this week. September figures, with metals up 25% to 30% year over year, remain the latest. October data is due in mid-November.
Pipeline Watch: What's Breaking Ground
Data Center
Project Jupiter tops out its first building. The first of four buildings at the Stack Infrastructure and BorderPlex campus in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, has topped out. Oracle is the tenant, running capacity for OpenAI. The first portion is 855,000 sf, Phase 1 targets Q3 2028, and full build-out could draw up to 2.5 GW. The gas pipeline's in-service date has slipped to February 2027. Construction Review Online
Glendale, Arizona approves Project Eagle. The City Council approved annexation and rezoning of about 160 acres near Luke Air Force Base: three data center buildings on 108 acres, an 18-turbine natural gas plant on 33 acres, and a future APS substation. The city expects construction to start in November. ABC15
Oklahoma City zones its first mega data center, with conditions. The council voted 6-3 for Beltline Energy's project, capping water use at 75,000 gallons a day, barring treated water for cooling, and limiting noise to 55 dB. Expect conditions like these to show up as cost lines: closed-loop cooling, acoustic treatment and generator-testing limits. Journal Record
Pauses keep spreading. Charlotte extended its moratorium by 11 months, Ascension Parish, Louisiana, adopted a 90-day pause, and Georgetown, Kentucky, extended its pause to June 2027. In Maryland, a judge refused to block Frederick County's moratorium, which runs to July 2027. Bisnow
Semiconductors
Samsung, Taylor, Texas. Fab 1 has started cleanroom operations and equipment installation, with wafers going in for line setup. Samsung said it is evaluating more capacity at Taylor, including additional fabs. Groundbreaking on Fab 2 is planned for November. Investing.com transcript
Intel, New Albany, Ohio. With the first structural truss set, Intel says it is evaluating ways to accelerate the Ohio build-out and expects to share more soon. Equipment purchase orders rose nearly 40% from the prior quarter. Intel Q3 call summary
What to watch. Election Day, Nov 3, decides local data center measures in several places, including a referendum in Ashville, Ohio, on its EdgeConneX agreement. October producer prices arrive in mid-November.