Explaining the AI infrastructure market to a board or investors? Get defensible numbers

Updated October 202670+ pagesPDF

AI Infrastructure by the Numbers
Cover of NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure by the Numbers report, 2026 edition
Is Nvidia paying its own customers to buy its chips? In part. Since 2025, Nvidia has backed at least eight companies that buy or rent out its GPUs, with shares, guarantees and rent-backs. The headlines were bigger than the deals: OpenAI’s “up to $100B” became $30B. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Can OpenAI pay for its computing plans to 2030? Not with its own money. OpenAI expects to bring in about $840B from 2026 to 2030, but to spend more than that on computing alone. It will need to raise far more than it has. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Is AI infrastructure now being built on borrowed money? More and more. Counting only the biggest deals made public, companies have borrowed more than $200B since late 2025, much of it for AI data centers, and part of it is kept off their own balance sheets. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Does Nvidia back the start-ups that could replace its chips? No, it backs the ones that buy them. Nvidia recently joined 27 funding rounds of AI infrastructure start-ups: GPU clouds, inference platforms, networking. Not one AI chip designer. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
How much of the AI clouds’ order books is OpenAI? A lot. About $300B of Oracle’s $664B of signed contracts comes from OpenAI, and nearly half of Microsoft’s. If OpenAI stumbles, these backlogs shrink with it. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Are China’s AI chip makers now worth more than America’s challengers? Yes, more than twice as much. China’s six listed GPU makers are worth about $191B on the stock market. The eight best-known US challengers, about $80B, mostly at their last funding rounds. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Who actually makes money from AI infrastructure? The companies furthest from the customer. Memory, chip and foundry makers keep $45 to $64 of every $100 they sell as profit. CoreWeave and Nebius, which rent the chips out, lose money, and Oracle earns mostly from software. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
How far have AI infrastructure stocks fallen from their peak? A long way. Most are worth less than half of what they were at their best; CoreWeave and Cerebras have lost about two thirds. Yet almost all are still worth more than at their IPO price. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Who is really ahead in AI cloud rental, CoreWeave or Nebius? CoreWeave is bigger, with 4 times Nebius’s sales and $104B of orders booked. But it carries $35B of debt, and investors now value Nebius higher, $47B against $34B. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.

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  • How big the market really is today
  • How fast it’s growing, and why
  • Why the forecasts disagree so much
  • Which segments and regions lead
  • Who are the top companies today
  • Who’s getting funded, and by whom
  • What are their valuations
  • Which business models are winning
  • What are the biggest unsolved problems
  • What has changed in the last 12 months
  • Where are the biggest opportunities
  • Who are the likely future winners
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Verified data with sourcesUpdated in October 2026