Make better decisions on the AI infrastructure market

Updated October 202670+ pagesPDF

AI Infrastructure Reality Check
Cover of NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure Reality Check report, 2026 edition
Which AI inference start-ups are racing to $1B in yearly sales? Fireworks AI and Modal have passed $1B a year, and Together AI has signed more than $1B of yearly contracts. Fireworks got there from about $130M in fourteen months. Baseten, fal and Runpod are still below $600M. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Who has promised the AI clouds the most work? OpenAI, by far. Counting only the biggest public contracts, it has promised about $570B to Oracle, Microsoft and CoreWeave, more than Meta, Anthropic and Microsoft together. 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.
CoreWeave or Nebius: who is closer to a profitable AI cloud? CoreWeave, by one step. It sells about four times more and both now bring in cash from running their clouds. Neither makes a real profit yet, and both spend far more on data centers than they earn. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
How much cloud work is signed but not yet delivered? Years of it. CoreWeave and Oracle have signed contracts worth about ten and nine years of their current sales, much of it with a handful of buyers such as OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft. 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.
How expensive are AI infrastructure companies, measured by their sales? Not the chip renters. CoreWeave is priced under 5 times its yearly sales, like most companies. Nebius, Cerebras and Nscale sit in bubble territory, 35 to 50 times. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.
Is renting an AI chip getting cheaper? Yes, then no. Renting an Nvidia H100 from a specialist AI cloud got about 30% cheaper during 2025, then prices rose again in 2026. Renting the same chip from Amazon, Microsoft or Google still costs two to three times more. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Infrastructure report.

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Inside the report

  • What has changed in the last 12 months
  • What works today, and what’s still hype
  • What are the biggest unsolved problems
  • Overbuilt, or still full?
  • Who are the top companies today
  • Who’s ahead, and who’s falling behind
  • What are their valuations
  • Who’s getting funded, and by whom
  • Which business models are winning
  • Which investors are making the biggest bets
  • Where are the biggest opportunities
  • Who are the likely future winners
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Verified data with sourcesUpdated in October 2026