'Neocloud' is four businesses, and filings show the AI boom pays them differently

Follow a dollar that an AI lab spends on computing power and it passes through several hands. Anthropic's Form S-1, made public on 26 October 2026, shows the lab leasing Broadcom hardware for data centres that others run for it. Labs and big tech groups also buy from GPU clouds such as CoreWeave or Nebius. A GPU cloud buys Nvidia chips, rents floor space and electricity from a data-centre landlord and sells time on the chips. The landlord, often a bitcoin miner that has added AI hosting, buys power from the grid or plans its own.

The label 'neocloud' gets stretched across companies that do four different jobs: selling chips, renting out GPUs, leasing powered buildings and developing power. This analysis asks whether demand for AI computing lifts each job the same way. Filings dated mostly late July to October 2026, largely covering the quarter to 30 June, say it does not. Margins, contract length, who owns the hardware and who carries the debt differ sharply by layer. Polstob's 25 October piece covered neocloud debt and a 27 October analysis compared AI with the dot-com era; this one maps the whole chain. It is a mental model, not a view on any share.

Nvidia sells the accelerators the rest of the chain runs on. In its quarter to 26 July 2026, Data Center revenue was $89.0bn and the company's gross margin was 75.0%, up from 72.4% a year earlier, its 10-Q shows. Nvidia's 10-Q also lists $36bn of cloud-service commitments, typically six years, to AI clouds that buy its chips. In May 2026 IREN signed a five-year contract, worth about $3.4bn in total contract value, to provide cloud services for Nvidia's own AI and research work, and granted Nvidia a right to invest up to $2.1bn in its shares, subject to GPU deliveries and regulatory conditions, IREN's 10-K says.

In the second quarter of 2026 CoreWeave had revenue of $2.58bn, against $1.21bn a year earlier, but an operating loss of $49m, net interest expense of $640m and a net loss of $626m, according to its 10-Q. Net interest equalled about 25% of revenue, by Polstob's arithmetic. CoreWeave owns the chips: gross technology equipment reached $33.8bn at 30 June 2026, up from $20.9bn six months earlier, and it depreciates that equipment over six years. Debt principal stood at $35.6bn. It rents most of its data-centre space, with $15.7bn of non-current operating lease liabilities.

Most of its revenue is contracted. Committed take-or-pay contracts, which generally run one to six years according to the company's annual report, produced 98% of second-quarter revenue. Remaining performance obligations, revenue contracted but not yet earned, were $103.7bn at 30 June, of which CoreWeave expected 41% to be recognised within 24 months. The buyer base is narrow. The customer the filing labels A supplied 36% of quarterly revenue, against 71% for Customer A a year earlier, though the filing warns the letters may stand for different customers in different periods. Named customers include Meta, which initially committed up to about $21.0bn, OpenAI, up to about $6.5bn through May 2031, and Jane Street, a private company, about $6.0bn.

Nebius leans more on customers' cash. Its AI cloud revenue rose to $574.9m in the second quarter of 2026 from $93.7m a year earlier. In the first half, advance payments from customers lifted its deferred revenue by $4,395.0m, the main reason operating cash flow reached $4,504.1m, according to its results filing. Remaining performance obligations were $37.5bn at 30 June, with 36% due within 24 months. In August it priced $5.0bn of convertible notes. Its Microsoft deal is worth up to about $17.4bn through 2031, subject to delivery. On 22 October Nebius announced a $3.5bn secured Citi facility with a 364-day maturity. From January 2026 it lengthened the accounting life of servers and network equipment from four to five years.

Some companies straddle layers. IREN, a bitcoin miner that develops and owns its own data centres, earned $128.8m from AI Cloud Services out of $707.0m of revenue in the year to 30 June 2026, its 10-K shows, from about 40 MW of AI cloud capacity. Its Microsoft contract, worth about $9.7bn through 2031 with 20% of each tranche paid upfront, and the Nvidia contract make up a substantial majority of its contracted revenue. ChronoScale, a listed GPU cloud majority-owned by Applied Digital, has a roughly three-year Microsoft deal that depends partly on raising finance. Quake AI, RUM Group's GPU-cloud unit, says about 250 MW of its capacity is not yet earning revenue and is targeted for 2027.

The third layer owns land, grid connections and buildings and leases powered space to GPU clouds, labs or chipmakers, whose servers sit inside. Most of the big landlords are bitcoin miners adding AI hosting. Core Scientific, TeraWulf, Cipher Digital, Hut 8 and CleanSpark all still mined bitcoin in the second quarter of 2026, as did Galaxy Digital, a crypto financial firm. Core Scientific's colocation revenue of $136.7m in that quarter came entirely from CoreWeave, which supplied about 77% of its total revenue in the first half, according to its 10-Q. About 395 MW was billing out of about 590 MW leased to CoreWeave, and power is passed through to the tenant without markup.

After $56.7m of colocation costs, including that pass-through power, the segment's gross margin was about 58% by Polstob's arithmetic. On 27 July 2026 Core Scientific signed 15-year leases, each with three five-year options, with AMD for 377 MW of critical IT capacity and with an unnamed tenant the filing describes as a neocloud for 152 MW. AMD provides credit support on the second set and holds a right to reserve up to 1,925 MW more through 28 December 2028. CoreWeave's all-stock takeover was ended on 30 October 2025 after Core Scientific's stockholders rejected it (10-K).

Galaxy had delivered all 133 MW of critical IT load in the first phase of its Helios campus to CoreWeave by the end of June, its third-quarter release shows; its 10-Q puts the lease at 15 years. CoreWeave has leased 393 MW more across Phases II and III, due from the second quarter of 2027; another 830 MW of approved capacity has no tenant yet. Cipher Digital, renamed from Cipher Mining in February 2026, reported $16.6bn of contracted revenue at 30 September and a portfolio weighted average lease term of 17.3 years (presentation). On 25 September it said an unnamed AI lab would lease Barber Lake for 10 more years after the current lease, lifting contracted revenue there above $9bn.

Google appears in several of these deals as a backstop rather than a tenant. At TeraWulf's Lake Mariner campus, 438 MW of critical IT is under contract and 102 MW was energised by July 2026. Its leases to Fluidstack, a private GPU cloud, run 10 years with two five-year renewals. Google backs some Fluidstack obligations and received warrants for 73.58m TeraWulf shares at $0.01, per TeraWulf's 10-Q. Cipher issued Google warrants for 24.2m shares for a similar backstop at Barber Lake. Hut 8's River Bend site in Louisiana, a 245 MW data centre leased entirely to Fluidstack with Google backing the rent, is partly funded by $3.25bn of 6.192% notes due 2042 that Hut 8 itself does not guarantee (10-Q).

Not every miner earns AI money yet. CleanSpark's 10-Q states: "As of June 30, 2026 and September 30, 2025, we had earned no revenues from our AI and HPC services business." In July it signed a 20-year lease for 175 MW with a wholly owned Meta subsidiary, with Meta guaranteeing the rent. In a presentation filed on 17 September it put the base-term value at about $6.6bn, with Phase I rent targeted to start in the fourth quarter of 2027. It closed $2.276bn of 7.875% secured notes due 2031 on 25 September. Applied Digital had 250 MW live at its Polaris Forge 1 campus from 1 October and 1,410 MW contracted, according to its results release and 10-Q.

The fourth layer has land and power plans but little or no AI revenue. Fermi plans about 11 GW of private-grid generation at Project Matador. It had no revenue by 30 June 2026; its 10-Q flagged substantial going-concern doubt before management's plans, which management concluded alleviate it. Fermi signed a 15-year, $6.5bn lease (Fermi's figure) with TensorWave, with AMD credit support; it takes effect only if closing conditions including project financing are met or waived, with delivery from Q4 2027. Fermi's fact sheet dated 14 October 2026 projected a project-level NOI margin of about 75% to 80% for that phase. On 16 October lender MUFG dropped a covenant requiring a 400 MW lease or offtake deal by 10 November.

Announced pipelines are far larger than what is running. Galaxy says its pipeline exceeds 5.7 GW of gross power, against 133 MW of critical IT delivered. Cipher's presentation lists about 3.4 GW of near-term grid capacity energising from 2027, against 907 MW operating and contracted. IREN holds grid agreements or equivalents for about 5 GW. MARA's joint-venture sites had not passed pre-development by 30 June, and block rewards made up $156.5m of its $174.9m second-quarter revenue (10-Q). Keel Infrastructure, formerly Bitfarms, stopped mining in Pennsylvania on 29 June 2026 and is evaluating two of those sites for AI and HPC (10-Q). Units differ: Galaxy uses about 200 MW of gross power for 133 MW of critical IT.

For GPU clouds one risk is a timing gap. IREN warns that when customer contracts are shorter than the life of the hardware, power commitments or financing, it faces re-contracting and pricing risk as they end. CoreWeave's contracts run one to six years against six-year depreciation, and 59% of its remaining performance obligations fall after 30 June 2028, by Polstob's arithmetic. Its delayed-draw term loans carried effective rates of 7% to 15% at 30 June. Buyers can move, too. Nscale, a private UK-based GPU cloud seeking a NYSE listing, got 52% of first-half revenue from its largest customer, and in April 2026 OpenAI quit Nscale's Norway and UK Stargate projects; Microsoft took the extra Norway capacity (S-1).

Landlords' leases run 10 to 20 years, far longer than GPU-cloud contracts, often with a large backstop, and they have paid for some of that with equity: warrants to Google at TeraWulf and Cipher, and to CoreWeave at Applied Digital. Their risks are building on time and on budget, and often relying on one tenant per site. Cipher will bear the first $359.3m of cost overruns at Barber Lake, and TeraWulf's notes came to about $5.7bn of principal at 30 June, its 10-Q shows. Backstops also tie the layers together. Anthropic's S-1 says some of its data-centre and power arrangements depend on "credit support provided by a third party that is also a competitor".