AI Capex Ceiling Raised Again, but Optical Is Already Diverging: 2026 W31 Industry Review

This week (2026 W31, 07/20–07/27) was the heart of Q2 earnings season, and the headline theme was an "AI capex ceiling test." Alphabet raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guide from last quarter's $180–190B to $195–205B, after spending $44.9B in Q2 alone. Intel's Data Center and AI group (DCAI) grew 59% year over year to $6.3B, its strongest sequential gain in 15 years, and even analog leader Texas Instruments named data centers as a growth engine. The demand anchor looks firmer than it did last quarter.

But the signal worth recording this week is not "capex went up again." It is that the optical communications sub-sector has started to diverge. Chinese optical module makers (Eoptolink, TFC Communication) issued strong H1 guidance, with 800G ramping and 1.6T climbing sequentially in Q2. US optical names (AOI, Coherent, Lumentum), by contrast, sold off together in a mid-week risk-off move. Even among the Chinese leaders, growth rates are pulling apart: Eoptolink expects H1 net profit to roughly double (RMB 7.0–8.0B, +77.56% to +102.93%), while TFC guided only +25% to +45% and explicitly flagged a slowdown. Taiwan is more extreme still: DigiTimes singled out optical modules in June as the AI server segment with the sharpest slowdown and the widest gap between winners and laggards.

Stack the three layers of divergence together and they point to one conclusion: the capex narrative is intact, but it no longer lifts every boat. Microsoft and Meta report on 7/29, followed by Apple and Amazon on 7/30. The question is not whether they spend more, but whether they follow Alphabet in raising guidance.

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That wraps up the key takeaways of this article.

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