Writes Second Order by TKN — a plain-English map of AI infrastructure and semiconductors for non-specialist investors. Focus: who gets paid, where money sticks, and which step is stuck. Not investment advice.
Wire
Nebius is paying for a data center before it exists. AIB says prepayments on a 12-year, 50 MW contract cover its equity in an $800 million build, with about $560 million of debt still to sign and rent from around late 2027.
Explained
The building takes about one to three years: Applied Digital's first 100 MW AI hall took two, from groundbreaking to live. Getting power to it often takes longer, with grid connection waits of five to ten years in many places. Power is the wait.
Taiwan
Taiwan shipped a record US$87.2 billion of goods in September, and computers and servers outsold chips. Imports from Korea rose 82.5% to US$11.6 billion, much of it memory. TSMC is paid first, memory makers next, the server builders on volume. The stuck step is memory.
AI Data Centers
NEXTDC builds and runs data centres in Australia, with Kuala Lumpur open and Tokyo and Auckland in development. At 30 June 2026 it had 740.1 MW contracted on a pro forma basis but was billing for only 175.0 MW, and it guides 197 MW to start billing in FY27.
AI Data Centers
Keppel DC REIT is a Singapore-listed trust that owns 25 data centres in 10 countries, 62.8% of its assets in Singapore, and passes the rent on as distributions. In 1H 2026 distributable income rose 18.5% to S$150.7m and DPU rose 11.3% to 5.714 cents.
AI Data Centers
Applied Digital designs, builds and runs AI data-centre campuses and leases them to large tenants. It has 1.41 GW leased and about $36bn of contracted base-term rent, but 250 MW of AI hall live as of 1 Oct 2026. It gets paid base rent once each hall is handed over.
AI Data Centers
Digital Realty owns and runs 310 data centres and leases the space, power and connections inside them. In Q2 2026 it signed $307m of new annual rent, carried a record $1.9bn backlog that is signed but not yet paying, and said new leases start paying about nine months after signing.
AI Data Centers
Equinix rents powered, cooled data-centre space and the connections between its customers. In Q2 2026 it reported $2.625bn of revenue, about 90% of it recurring, and plans $5–6bn of capital spending in 2026. It gets paid by the month, not when a chip ships.
Explained
EUV and DUV are the two kinds of light used to print chips. EUV prints the finest layers in one pass and costs about €231 million a machine; DUV prints most layers for about €83 million. The stuck step is the EUV box, not the DUV one.
Wire
Oracle is trucking compressed gas to AI data centers, including an OpenAI campus in Texas, and weighing it for 2.45 GW Project Jupiter as a rerouted pipeline slips into 2027. Trucked gas costs about four times pipeline gas.
Wire
Lumentum's CEO says its optical parts for AI data centers are sold out through early 2029, with about 70% of demand for some products unmet through next year. The stuck step is laser fab capacity, which takes three to five years to add.
Explained
AI inference is running a trained AI model to answer a new request. It is the part of AI people use, so it is billed again and again, by the token or by the GPU hour. The stuck step is the spare GPU kept ready that earns nothing.
