THE FULL STACK — PUBLIC & PRIVATE

The AI Value Chain

Every layer the AI buildout runs through — lithography to labs, gigawatts to grid crews — with the companies that own each front and the capital connecting them. Dated notes, sources on material claims, updated with the weekly sweep. One company gets the full treatment every week in Deep Dives. The roster is living — missing a company? Corrections and additions welcome. Event-driven startups live on the Startup Ledger →

01Chips & silicon

The scarcest layer: accelerators, memory, the one foundry that can make them, and the one lithography company the foundry depends on.

NVIDIANVDAPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Dominant AI accelerator supplier — and now a top strategic investor: $30B into OpenAI's 2026 round.

2026 · Cloud Wars

TSMCTSMPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Effectively the sole leading-edge foundry — NVIDIA, AMD, Apple, and the custom hyperscaler chips are all manufactured here.

2026

AMDAMDPROFILE →

PUBLIC

The principal merchant-silicon alternative to NVIDIA (MI-series accelerators).

2026

BroadcomAVGOPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Custom AI ASICs for hyperscalers plus the networking silicon that stitches clusters together.

2026

SK Hynix / MicronMUPROFILE →

PUBLIC

High-bandwidth memory (HBM) duopoly-plus-one — the physical bottleneck inside every accelerator.

2026

ASMLASMLPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Monopoly supplier of EUV lithography — the machine the whole chain stands on.

2026

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

Intel (INTC)Samsung Foundry Qualcomm (QCOM)Marvell (MRVL)Arm (ARM)Applied Materials (AMAT)Lam Research (LRCX)KLA (KLAC)Tokyo Electron Synopsys (SNPS)Cadence (CDNS)Astera Labs (ALAB)Credo (CRDO)Groq (private)Cerebras (private)SambaNova (private)Tenstorrent (private)Etched (private)

02Hyperscalers & clouds

The distribution layer — and the biggest capital spenders in corporate history: ~$725B combined 2026 capex, up 77% year over year.

MicrosoftMSFTPROFILE →

PUBLIC

OpenAI's foundational partner (multiyear, multibillion investment since 2019-23; terms reaffirmed Oct 2025); Azure is the deployment surface.

2026 · OpenAI/Microsoft statement

AmazonAMZNPROFILE →

PUBLIC

~$200B 2026 capex — and uniquely backs BOTH frontier camps: ~$8B into Anthropic plus $50B into OpenAI's 2026 round.

2026 · Cloud Wars

Alphabet / GoogleGOOGLPROFILE →

PUBLIC

~$175–185B 2026 capex; DeepMind + Gemini in-house; multi-billion Anthropic stake; 75% of its new code now AI-written.

2026 · DevOps.com

MetaMETAPROFILE →

PUBLIC

~$115–135B 2026 capex; builds for itself (Llama, Superintelligence Labs) rather than renting to others.

2026 · Statista capex chart

OracleORCLPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Equity partner in the $500B Stargate build-out; OCI became a frontier-training cloud.

2026 · OpenAI (Stargate)

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

IBM (IBM)Salesforce (CRM)SAP Tesla/xAI compute (private build)Apple (AAPL — on-device + Private Cloud Compute)

03Data centers & AI-native compute

Who actually builds and operates the buildings: the REIT incumbents, the GPU-cloud insurgents, and the power-first converts.

CoreWeaveCRWVPROFILE →

PUBLIC

The GPU-cloud insurgent — NVIDIA-backed, IPO'd 2025, a primary OpenAI compute supplier.

2026

Equinix / Digital RealtyEQIX / DLRPROFILE →

PUBLIC

The colocation REIT incumbents retrofitting for AI density.

2026

CrusoePROFILE →

PRIVATE

Energy-first builder; anchor developer at Stargate's Abilene, TX campus.

2026

NebiusNBISPROFILE →

PUBLIC

AI-infrastructure cloud built from Yandex's carve-out; NVIDIA-backed.

2026

Hut 8HUTPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Bitcoin-miner-turned-AI-campus operator; 1 GW Beacon Point fully leased, $19.6B base-term value (see Startup Ledger).

Jul 2026 · SEC 8-K

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

Vantage (private)QTS/Blackstone (private)Switch (private)Aligned (private)EdgeConneX (private)Applied Digital (APLD)TeraWulf (WULF)Cipher Mining (CIFR)IREN (IREN)Galaxy Digital (GLXY)Iron Mountain (IRM)American Tower/DC assets (AMT)Lambda (private)Together AI (private)

04Power & energy

The binding constraint. Gigawatts are the new GPUs: nuclear restarts, gas turbines, fuel cells, and SMR bets — all pulled forward by AI demand.

Constellation EnergyCEGPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Largest US nuclear fleet; restarting Three Mile Island Unit 1 under a 20-year Microsoft power agreement.

2026

Vistra / TalenVST / TLNPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Independent power producers whose nuclear/gas capacity became AI-datacenter currency (Talen supplies an AWS campus).

2026

GE VernovaGEVPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Gas-turbine order book stretched years out on data-center demand.

2026

NextEraNEEPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Largest US renewables developer — speed-to-power matters more than fuel type for AI campuses.

2026

Bloom EnergyBEPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Fuel cells as bridge power where the grid can't connect fast enough.

2026

OkloOKLOPROFILE →

PUBLIC

SMR (small modular reactor) bet on AI's late-decade power gap; Sam Altman chaired its SPAC.

2026

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

Duke Energy (DUK)Southern Company (SO)Dominion (D)AEP (AEP)PG&E (PCG)Cameco (CCJ — uranium)BWX Technologies (BWXT)NuScale (SMR)X-energy (private)TerraPower (private)Chevron/ExxonMobil (gas-to-power JVs)Caterpillar (CAT — gensets)Cummins (CMI)

05Equipment, cooling & servers

Between the chip and the building: the thermal and electrical gear every megawatt of AI needs, and the server assemblers.

VertivVRTPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Power + liquid-cooling infrastructure — the pure-play on AI heat.

2026

Eaton / Schneider ElectricETNPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Electrical distribution inside the data center; Schneider (Paris-listed) owns the reference designs.

2026

SupermicroSMCIPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Rack-scale AI server assembly at speed.

2026

Dell / HPEDELL / HPEPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Enterprise AI-server channel to everyone who isn't a hyperscaler.

2026

Arista NetworksANETPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Cluster networking — the switches that make 100k GPUs act like one machine.

2026

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

nVent (NVT)Modine (MOD — cooling)Munters Johnson Controls (JCI)Trane (TT)Celestica (CLS)Jabil (JBL)Foxconn / Quanta Computer / Wiwynn (ODM server builders)Coherent (COHR)Lumentum (LITE)Fabrinet (FN)Ciena (CIEN)Corning (GLW — fiber)

06Grid, construction & logistics

The unglamorous fronts where AI meets the physical economy: transmission lines, substations, mechanical install — and moving very heavy things.

Quanta ServicesPWRPROFILE →

PUBLIC

The largest grid-and-transmission builder — every AI campus needs interconnection someone has to construct.

2026

MasTecMTZPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Power delivery and pipeline construction riding the same interconnection queue.

2026

Comfort Systems / EMCORFIX / EMEPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Mechanical + electrical contractors installing the cooling and power inside AI builds — order books at records.

2026

Specialized heavy transportPROFILE →

PRIVATE

Transformers, turbines, and prefab modules move on permit-bound heavy-haul carriers (Mammoet, Barnhart, Landstar heavy/specialized) — a fragmented, capacity-constrained niche the buildout quietly depends on.

2026

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

Hitachi Energy / Siemens Energy / Hyundai Electric (transformers — multi-year backlogs)Powell Industries (POWL)AECOM (ACM)Jacobs (J)Fluor (FLR)Turner Construction (private)DPR Construction (private)Prologis (PLD — powered land)

07Frontier labs (the private giants)

Where the capability is made — and where the largest private financings in history are happening.

OpenAIPROFILE →

PRIVATE

$110B raised at a $730B valuation (2026) — Amazon $50B, NVIDIA $30B, SoftBank $30B; co-lead of the $500B Stargate build.

2026 · Cloud Wars

AnthropicPROFILE →

PRIVATE

~$69B revenue run-rate (Jul 2026, passed OpenAI); raised $4.5B in Q1-26; backed by Amazon (~$8B) and Google.

2026 · Sacra

xAIPROFILE →

PRIVATE

Musk's lab; Colossus cluster in Memphis; merged with X for distribution.

2026

Safe SuperintelligencePROFILE →

PRIVATE

Ilya Sutskever's straight-shot lab — multibillion valuation with no product by design.

2026

MistralPROFILE →

PRIVATE

Europe's frontier flag-carrier; sovereign-AI positioning.

2026

DeepSeekPROFILE →

STATE-LINKED

China's efficiency-focused frontier lab; open releases that repeatedly reset cost expectations.

2026

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

Cohere (private)AI21 (private)Perplexity (private)Scale AI (Meta-aligned)Thinking Machines Lab (private)Reflection AI (private)

08Applications & enterprise AI

Where capability becomes revenue outside the labs: data platforms, enterprise software with AI attach, and the deployment layer.

PalantirPLTRPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Enterprise/government AI deployment — the ontology-plus-agents pitch.

2026

DatabricksPROFILE →

PRIVATE

The data-and-models platform; one of the largest private software companies in history.

2026

SnowflakeSNOWPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Data cloud racing to be where enterprise AI runs.

2026

ServiceNow / SalesforceNOW / CRMPROFILE →

PUBLIC

The agentic-enterprise incumbents — every workflow suite now ships agents.

2026

Duolingo / Shopify / Klarna (AI-forward operators)PROFILE →

PUBLIC

The operating companies most publicly restructured around AI labor.

2026

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

Adobe (ADBE)Intuit (INTU)Atlassian (TEAM)MongoDB (MDB)Cloudflare (NET)Datadog (DDOG)CrowdStrike (CRWD)Cursor/Anysphere (private)Harvey (private)Abridge (private)Glean (private)Sierra (private)

09The China stack

The parallel universe the export-control regime created: its own chips, clouds, labs, and constraints — the other half of every world-order scenario.

HuaweiPROFILE →

STATE-LINKED

Ascend accelerators — China's NVIDIA substitute under export controls.

2026

SMIC0981.HKPROFILE →

PUBLIC

China's leading foundry, capped at trailing nodes by equipment bans.

2026

Alibaba / Tencent / Baidu / ByteDanceBABA / 0700.HK / BIDUPROFILE →

PUBLIC

The Chinese hyperscalers — Qwen, Hunyuan, Ernie, Doubao model families.

2026

DeepSeek / Moonshot / Zhipu / MiniMaxPROFILE →

STATE-LINKED

The frontier-lab tier; DeepSeek's efficiency releases repeatedly moved global cost expectations.

2026

Cambricon688256.SSPROFILE →

PUBLIC

Domestic AI-chip champion, priced like China's whole substitution thesis.

2026

ALSO ON THIS FRONT (CLICK ANY NAME)

CXMT (memory)Hygon Biren (private)Moore Threads (private)01.AI (private)StepFun (private)

08The money graph — who invested in whom

Q1 2026 AI funding exceeded $180B — more than all of 2024 combined.

INVESTOR	INTO	AMOUNT	DEAL TYPE	AS OF	SOURCE
Amazon	OpenAI	$50B	EQUITY ROUND	2026	Cloud Wars part of the $110B round at $730B valuation — while also backing Anthropic
NVIDIA	OpenAI	$30B	EQUITY ROUND	2026	Cloud Wars the chip monopolist funding its biggest customer
SoftBank	OpenAI	$30B	EQUITY ROUND	2026	Benzinga on top of earlier ~$25B reports; Stargate co-lead
Microsoft	OpenAI	multibillion (2019–23)	PARTNERSHIP INVESTMENT	reaffirmed Oct 2025	OpenAI/Microsoft the foundational partnership; terms restated alongside the 2026 round
SoftBank + OpenAI + Oracle + MGX	Stargate (JV)	$500B planned / $100B immediate	JOINT VENTURE	announced Jan 2025	OpenAI the largest announced infrastructure program in tech history
Amazon	Anthropic	~$8B cumulative	STRATEGIC STAKE	2023–24	Sacra primary cloud + training partner (Trainium)
Google	Anthropic	multi-billion	STRATEGIC STAKE	2023–25	Sacra minority stake + TPU capacity
NVIDIA	CoreWeave / Nebius	equity stakes	STRATEGIC STAKE	2023–25	Bloomberg circular-deals analysis the vendor-financing loop: chips for equity for chip purchases
OpenAI	Promptfoo	undisclosed	ACQUISITION	Mar 2026	TechCrunch agent-security startup folded into OpenAI Frontier — part of an 18-deal consolidation wave

STRUCTURAL RISK — THE CIRCULARITY NOTE

A defining feature of this cycle: the money moves in circles. NVIDIA invests in OpenAI, which buys NVIDIA chips through clouds NVIDIA also part-owns; Amazon funds both frontier camps while selling them compute; Oracle takes equity in the venture that is its biggest customer. Bloomberg mapped the loop in 2026. Circular capital is not automatically fake — but it means revenue, capex, and valuations can reinforce each other on the way up and unwind together on the way down. We track it as a structural risk, not a scandal.

09Who funds the private giants

SoftBank — Largest single check-writer of the cycle (OpenAI, Stargate co-lead)
Strategic tech (NVIDIA, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle) — Vendors and clouds funding their own customers and suppliers — see the circularity note
MGX (UAE) — Sovereign wealth entering at infrastructure scale via Stargate
Crossover growth funds (Thrive, Fidelity-class) — Late-stage rounds at public-market size while companies stay private

INFORMATIONAL ONLY — not investment advice; inclusion is not an endorsement. Tickers shown for identification. See the full disclaimer.

Chain moves, weekly

New investments, capex shifts, and layer-by-layer changes — in the Monday brief.