REDMOND, Aug. 25 -- The question every hyperscaler has been asked this year is what the capital spending returns. Microsoft has an unusually specific answer: $678 billion of contracted revenue it has signed but not yet recognised, up 84 per cent from a year earlier.

That figure, the commercial remaining performance obligation, is the closest thing in this industry to a receipt. It is not a forecast, not a total addressable market and not a slide. It is work customers have committed to buy, sitting on the balance sheet waiting to be delivered.

Microsoft rose 0.93 per cent to $487.73 on Monday afternoon while the semiconductor index fell 2.32 per cent. The shares are 11.9 per cent below their 52-week high, which puts them in the middle of...