The companies that own the buildings where artificial-intelligence computing physically happens have now all reported their latest quarters, and the results sort them into two groups that the tape has not yet distinguished. On 12 August, after CoreWeave and Nebius — the "neocloud" operators that rent capacity rather than own it — reported quarters that sent CoreWeave up 19% and Nebius up 34%, the three smallest names in this group rallied hard while the two largest actual landlords fell. That sorting was by beta to the tenants, not by the economics of the halls.

The landlords that are working

GDS Holdings, which develops and leases colocation space — power, cooling and racks rented to cloud providers, internet firms and banks — across China, grew first-quarter revenue 23.6% to RMB 3.37bn while gross margin widened to 33.6% from 23.7% a year earlier. Operating income rose 148.6% to RMB 908m, an operating margin of 27.0%. That is operating leverage arriving, not promised. GDS logged a record 200 megawatts of new bookings in the quarter and over 340 megawatts year-to-date, lifting its expectation to 500-800 megawatts annually, and has committed RMB 30-50bn of capital spending over three years, roughly RMB 9bn in 2026 against RMB 4.3bn in 2025. The shares are down 13% over twelve months and 27% over three.

VNET Group, the Beijing operator running colocation, managed hosting and wholesale build-to-suit space, is the weaker half of the Chinese pair: revenue grew 19.8% to RMB 2.69bn but gross margin fell to 22.9% from 25.2%, operating income was flat, and it posted a RMB 2.23bn net loss. It guides to delivering another 450-500 megawatts in 2026 on RMB 10-12bn of capital spending, alongside a battery tie-up with CATL. Both companies last reported the March quarter, so the entire three-month drawdown in each happened with no new disclosure at all.

On the metrics that fit leveraged landlords, GDS trades at 13.7x trailing enterprise-value-to-EBITDA, 3.56x sales and 1.36x book value; VNET at 9.8x EV/EBITDA and 1.35x sales, with free cash flow at minus 42.5% of market value as capital spending runs. Equinix and Digital Realty, the mature American data-centre landlords, carried roughly 11x sales when this desk last measured them.

The backlog that has not arrived

Applied Digital, the Dallas operator that converted from crypto hosting to building AI data centres in North Dakota and elsewhere, grew fiscal-2026 revenue 183.7% to $611.3m, with the May quarter up 580.7% to $258.7m. But that quarter's gross margin collapsed to 15.7% from 42.5%, the operating margin was minus 45.2%, and the year's net loss was $244.0m. Its annual report discloses approximately $36.2bn of non-cancellable take-or-pay lease revenue across 1,410 megawatts at five campuses, including a third CoreWeave lease of 150 megawatts that took one campus to 400 megawatts and roughly $11bn. The schedule in the same filing is the sobering part: $451.1m falls due in fiscal 2027 and $1.45bn in fiscal 2028, with $27.1bn in "thereafter" — about 1.3% converting to cash next year. It ended May with $4.2bn of cash against $5.0bn of debt, notes priced at 6.75% and 7.0%, and needs several billion more to build what it has sold. Trailing price-to-sales has halved to 15.6x from 28.7x in early May at essentially the same market value — the multiple compressed because revenue arrived, not because the price fell.

The three that rallied

Keel Infrastructure, formerly the bitcoin miner Bitfarms, is the clearest contradiction. June-quarter revenue fell 60.9% to $30.4m at a gross margin of minus 285%, with a $140.8m operating loss. On its 10 August call it confirmed it has signed no high-performance-computing leases, targets three this year, and reported that Moses Lake's 18 megawatts slips to 2027, Panther Creek's environmental permits are running months late and Scrubgrass has no power secured. It holds $819m of liquidity and is liquidating its remaining 1,861 bitcoin. Consensus has 2026 revenue falling another 59% to $112.5m — which is why forward price-to-sales, at 19.0x, sits above trailing 14.1x.

SharonAI, a 25-employee New York graphics-processor cloud carrying a $2.40bn market value, booked $1.93m of revenue last quarter at a negative gross margin and a $428.3m net loss — 776x trailing sales. It claims 212 megawatts secured, 120 contracted, $8.8bn of year-to-date contract value and a six-year, $4.9bn NVIDIA collaboration, with first material revenue only in the December quarter. A short seller, Bleecker Street Research, has questioned whether its largest contract counterparty can pay.

WhiteFiber, spun out of Bit Digital to run graphics-processor-optimised halls and cloud capacity, grew quarterly revenue 54.5% to $28.8m with adjusted EBITDA of $5.5m — though $12.3m of that revenue was a customer termination payment. It disclosed over $540m of new multi-year cloud agreements and said its North Carolina site reaches full billing by end-August after a switchgear delay. It trades at 11.7x trailing and 8.7x forward sales.

Verdicts

Business momentum CONFIRMS the story for GDS and Applied Digital, and CONTRADICTS it for Keel and SharonAI. Valuation CONFIRMS a dislocation at GDS and VNET — improving operations, falling shares, single-digit-to-low-teens EV/EBITDA against American peers at multiples of that — and is INCONCLUSIVE for Applied Digital, where a genuine backlog meets $5.0bn of debt and a one-year cash conversion of 1.3%.

The tape agrees with the businesses only in China's case, and inversely: GDS and VNET have traded with their 50-day averages below their 200-day since spring, Applied Digital has been mildly below since July, and all three small-caps lost their uptrends on 28 July. The binding constraint on every one of them is electricity: American interconnection queues hold roughly 2,600 gigawatts of proposed capacity with waits of five years or more, and switchgear is sold out through 2028, while a Texas moratorium risks delaying about 20% of the national pipeline.

The setup

Where it stands — Two landlords are growing into falling shares; three smaller names rallied on tenants' results rather than their own.

Would confirm — GDS second-quarter bookings above 150 megawatts with gross margin holding above 33%.

Would invalidate — Applied Digital's fiscal-2027 revenue tracking below the $822m consensus, or new debt raised above 7%.

Watch next — GDS and VNET report June-quarter results; WhiteFiber's North Carolina site reaches full billing by end-August.

Valuation — GDS 13.7x trailing EV/EBITDA and 1.36x book; Applied Digital 15.6x trailing, 10.9x forward sales; Keel 14.1x trailing versus 19.0x forward.