The Investment Layer
The AI infrastructure M&A map
Every material deal 2023-2026 across the six layers of AI infrastructure, four through-lines that describe them, and fifteen forward candidates by name. Part II of The Investment Layer.
Adi Kumar
The Investment Layer
How the AI buildout is financed
Six pools of capital finance the AI infrastructure buildout: hyperscaler cash flow, REITs, OEM balance sheets, structured debt, sovereign, and PE. Part I of The Investment Layer.
AI Power Chain
The Services Inversion
An installed base generates maintenance work whether or not the manufacturer does it. Two conditions decide who captures the annuity: the customer's capability gap, and defensibility against independents. Seven positions across the AI infrastructure chain.
AI Power Chain
Pricing Under Scarcity
Shortage is not the same as pricing power. Ten commercial positions across the AI infrastructure chain, sorted by the two conditions that determine whether scarcity converts to margin: how expensive escape is for the buyer, and whether qualified rivals decline to undercut.
AI Power Chain
The AI Power Chain: Vendor Screen
337 vendors across 6 stacks — capacitors, wide-bandgap, thermal, interconnect, on-package delivery, modular DC — with a weighted diligence rank you can re-weight live. Filter by geography, size, public/private. Download as CSV. Free for subscribers.
Essay
The Modular Datacenter Stack Technical Companion
Skid architectures, BESS integration, MV switchgear, busway and rack topologies for the modular hyperscale datacenter build.
Essay
The Modular Datacenter Stack: How the Building Gets Built (When There Aren't Enough Electricians)
How the AI datacenter building gets built: modular skids, BESS, UPS, busway, rack enclosures. Where PE has deployed and where returns compress.
Essay
The On-Package Delivery Stack — Technical Companion
IVR magnetics, thin-film substrates, high-density capacitors and the qualification-gated architecture of on-package power delivery.
Essay
The On-Package Delivery Stack: How 48V Becomes 0.8V at 2,250 Amperes
How 48V becomes 0.8V at the chip die: multi-phase POL, IVR, on-package power delivery, and why the foundries hold the strategic value pool.
Essay
The Interconnect Stack: Technical Companion
Where the market essay named the vendors and quantified the lead times, this piece explains the physics. Why voltage steps up, how a 400-tonne transformer moves 300 MW at 99% efficiency, why SF6 became standard and why it is being phased out.
Essay
The Interconnect Stack: Transformers, Switchgear and the Grid Equipment That Gates the AI Buildout
Grid interconnect is now the binding constraint on AI. Large power transformer lead times have doubled since 2023. Hyperscalers are building their own generation to escape 4-7 year utility queues. A layer-by-layer analysis from grain-oriented electrical steel to grid queue reform.
Essay
The Capacitor Stack: Technical Companion
Where the market essay named the vendors, this piece explains the physics. What a farad actually is, why HSCs beat batteries on 10-second pulses, why MLCCs derate under DC bias, and why a fifty-cent film cap decides whether an 800VDC rack survives its own noise.