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.
Analysis
GE Vernova, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy hold about 246 GW of gas turbine orders and reservations, paid in cash years before delivery. Who gets paid first, who waits, three scenarios with the arithmetic shown.
Wire
IREN has grid power and a civil works licence for a 300 MW AI data center in Spain, due in 2028. It has no named customer yet, and the tenant is what sets the cost of its GPU debt.
Explained
AI data centers sit in a few dense clusters, led by Northern Virginia and Texas, with Johor, Singapore, Sydney and Melbourne in Asia-Pacific. They go where a utility can promise megawatts on a date, so the map of signed power is far bigger than the map of halls switched on.
US
Texas Instruments' data center sales rose about 95% in the third quarter, to about 13% of revenue. It has clean rooms to spare, but tools for its back-end lines are arriving late and its finished-goods cushion fell 14% this year. That is the stuck step.
Explained
Silicon photonics makes the optical parts of a data link on silicon chip lines. Silicon can steer light but cannot make it well, so every link still needs an indium phosphide laser, and that laser is where AI optics is short.
Wire
Liberty Energy signed a 1.2 GW data center power agreement with an unnamed frontier AI lab, which prepays hundreds of millions of dollars before the first 500 MW contract is signed. Power arrives from late 2027, and Liberty still owes $1.6 billion on generators.
AI Data Centers
Core Scientific is a former Bitcoin miner that now leases powered AI data center halls: about 1.1 GW signed with CoreWeave, AMD and an unnamed neocloud, 437 MW billing by mid-July 2026, and one tenant still paying almost all the rent.
Wire
Andy Jassy says AWS is sold out for 2026, largely for 2027 and partly for 2028. The $496 billion backlog is almost three years of revenue, and power and memory set the pace.
Catalyst
Cambricon's third-quarter sales doubled to RMB3.53 billion, but RMB11.66 billion of inventory, about 2.8 times nine months of costs, shows China's leading AI chip designer buying supply years ahead and paying for it in a write-down and thinner cash.
Explained
A reserved GPU bills for its whole term; an on-demand GPU bills only while it runs. Neoclouds live on the first, the second sets the price signal, and in 2026 the discount for committing has been shrinking.
Korea
Korea announced 13 fixes on 23 October to cut the waiting time in building chip fabs: permits run side by side, whole chip parks become one bonded zone. None of the 13 builds a power line, and a new 345 kV line still takes about nine years. That is the stuck step.
Analysis
Keppel DC REIT's distribution rose 11.7%, but its oldest Singapore hall is 46% full as it winds down for a possible rebuild in a city that rations power. What the price assumes, who gets paid first, three scenarios with the arithmetic shown.
