Capex and opex are just accounting labels that help categorize costs and can improve planning ability. But at the end of the day a billion dollars is a billion dollars.
They’re significant here because opex impacts profits while capex sort of doesn’t. They have a path to profitability if revenue > opex, by quitting growth and slashing capex.
I believe there's a fair amount of tax implications involved with that bucketing though. Capex is taxed at a lower rate than opex is my understanding but I may be wrong on the specifics of it all.
Lots of hand waving, but that’s the idea.