The worry is the funding, not the demand

The companies in this story are landlords to the artificial-intelligence boom rather than participants in it: they own or lease the halls, wire the power and rent capacity to the firms that buy the chips. Through late July they were repriced on a question that has nothing to do with tenant appetite. Alphabet's 22 July results raised 2026 capital-spending guidance to $195-205bn from $180-190bn and flagged a "significant" increase for 2027 — and the shares fell 7%, a reversal of the reflex that had rewarded every spending raise. Days later, reporting that Nvidia was in talks to guarantee roughly $250bn of financing for an OpenAI data-centre project helped wipe about $1.3 trillion off chip-sector value on concerns about circular funding and mounting debt.

The resulting split runs along balance sheets, not business models. Over the 30 days to 7 August, Microsoft rose 31.4%, established landlords Digital Realty and Equinix gained 9.9% and 2.6% — while junk-rated, equity- and lease-funded builders fell: TeraWulf 25.3%, Nebius 13.5%, Core Scientific 10.6%, IREN 8.5%. Demand itself is not in question: hyperscaler 2026 budgets run near $200bn at Amazon and $110-120bn at Microsoft, and colocation operators are signing 10-15 year build-to-suit leases on whole campuses.

The group average is two micro-caps

Equal-weighted, the six names fell 17.4% in 30 days. Weighted by market value they fell 9.2%. SharonAI (-34.6%) and WhiteFiber (-33.0%), together 7% of the group's ~$20.6bn of combined value, account for roughly 65% of the decline. Applied Digital fell 7.3% and GDS 2.6%.

The twelve-month picture is equally split: Keel Infrastructure is up 203.1% and Applied Digital 104.6%, while GDS is down 14.2% and VNET 10.1%. And the one-month frame flatters the tape — Applied Digital is down 29.4% over 90 days and 41.3% from its 52-week high; GDS is down 27.7% over 90 days, with its 50-day average beneath its 200-day every session since 18 June.

Applied Digital: the business and the tape point opposite ways

Applied Digital, a Dallas developer of purpose-built AI data centres that pivoted out of crypto-mining hosting, grew fiscal-2026 revenue (year to 31 May) 183.7% to $611.3m, with gross margin widening from 10.5% to 25.8%. It reported on 27 July a continuing-operations net loss of $249.2m, or $0.91 a share. Contracted revenue is the striking number: a 15-year, 300-megawatt take-or-pay lease with a U.S. investment-grade hyperscaler worth about $7.5bn lifted total contracted lease revenue to roughly $31bn across four campuses and 1,200 megawatts, from roughly $16bn in May.

On business momentum the tape CONTRADICTS the fundamentals. On valuation it is INCONCLUSIVE. Price-to-sales compressed from 28.7x in early May to 14.4x trailing and 10.1x forward — but price-to-gross-profit barely moved, 63.3x to 64.4x trailing, so investors are paying the same for each dollar of actual profit. Two caveats sit under the lease story: fourth-quarter gross margin fell to 15.7% from 42.5% the prior quarter, and diluted shares rose from 201.2m to 275.2m, alongside 2030 debt and a $5bn preferred-equity facility. Anchor tenant CoreWeave, on roughly 400 megawatts, saw its five-year credit-default swaps top about 855 basis points — implying roughly a coin-flip default probability over five years.

China's two hosts are growing into a falling tape

GDS Holdings, Shanghai-based and China's largest listed data-centre operator, grew first-quarter revenue 23.6% to RMB 3,367m with gross margin up to 33.6% from 23.7% and operating margin at 27.0%. It guided 2026 revenue to RMB 12.4-12.9bn and adjusted EBITDA to RMB 5.75-6.0bn, with RMB 30-50bn of capital spending over three years. It trades at 13.75x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA. VNET, the Beijing hosting and colocation group, grew revenue 19.8% to RMB 2,691m — a fifth straight quarter near 20% — but gross margin slipped to 22.9% from 25.2%, free cash flow yield is -45.5%, and it has guided to another 450-500 megawatts and RMB 10-12bn of 2026 capex. Both are diverging from their own results, and both carry U.S. delisting risk. Read them on EV/EBITDA, not the headline price-to-sales figures, which divide a dollar market value by yuan revenue.

The tail: one earner, one shrinker, one shell

Keel Infrastructure, the former Bitfarms rebuilt as an AI-power and data-centre developer, is the case where price CONFIRMS the business: first-quarter revenue fell 44.7% to $37.0m at a -71.1% gross margin, consensus sees fiscal-2026 revenue of $112.5m (-59%), and price-to-sales rises from 12.7x trailing to 22.6x forward because the denominator is shrinking; shares outstanding grew 45% in five quarters. SharonAI, a 25-person GPU-cloud startup, booked $294,014 of quarterly revenue against a $513m market value — 334x trailing sales — with the 3.4x forward figure resting on two analysts modelling a 98-fold revenue jump off a $1.25bn five-year contract with ESDS Software Solutions that this desk previously reported as disputed. WhiteFiber, spun out of Bit Digital last August, is the quiet operator: revenue up 30.7% to $21.9m at a 60.2% gross margin and the only positive free-cash-flow yield in the group, at 5.97%, on 19.2x trailing and 12.8x forward price-to-gross-profit.

The setup

Where it stands — A financing-driven de-rating is hitting all six, but only Keel's shrinking revenue justifies it; Applied Digital's contracted book doubled while its shares fell.

Would confirm — Applied Digital converting Polaris Forge leases into cash with gross margin recovering above the 25.8% full-year level next quarter.

Would invalidate — A CoreWeave payment deferral or renegotiation on its roughly 400 megawatts, or further equity issuance beyond the 36.8% share growth already booked.

Watch next — Applied Digital's fiscal first-quarter results in October; GDS and VNET second-quarter reports and any change to 2026 capex guidance.

Valuation — Applied Digital 14.4x trailing and 10.1x forward sales versus 28.7x in May; GDS 13.75x and VNET 9.58x trailing EV/EBITDA.