Is he still acting on HBO Homeland?
Gavin Baker predicts cloud revenue growth will keep accelerating and more of the 2027 AI build-out than people think will be financed out of cash flow
“So all these clouds, they signed contracts at well below market values. And as those contracts reprice higher, as they bring on more compute with more spot, like we discussed, the same thing that CoreWeave is trying to do, I do think you’re going to see, like, there’s a pretty big acceleration in the clouds last quarter.”
“And forget relative to expectations, this or that, but I think you’re gonna see a pretty continuous acceleration in the sum of the big hyperscalers’ cloud revenue growth, the neoclouds. That number is just going to continue to accelerate.”
“And then it’s dropping down at very high margins so that operating cash flow is following. And then you’re gonna be able to finance probably more than people think of the 2027 build-out out of cash flow. I don’t know if we’ve seen the peak of external financing, but I think we’re getting close.”
Does Daniel know this is very negative? Mkt closed and they hope to complete what they got?
$NBIS CEO Arkady Volozh Says Debt Markets Closed for Neoclouds Since Last Week
"We have a pretty healthy balance sheet. We always thought about being more conservative here. We used all kinds of instruments. From last week, probably some of the capital sources are temporarily closed, like the asset-backed or debt market. But we're working now with customer advances and several other instruments,which will probably provide us enough finance to build this gigawatt at least."
Problem is this math was same on Friday as today within the ratio you used so not new. And now they need the demand for it?
Anthropic’s SpaceXAI deal alone will run at roughly 1.7x its *ENTIRE q2 compute and infrastructure expense per quarter once fully delivered.
~$3.1b a month at full capacity vs. $5.6b for all of Q2.
Holding Q2’s 48% compute-to-revenue ratio with this deal added would take ~$31bn a quarter in rev. Q2 was $11.6b
Should say "I am long, I am balls long" and sharing reinforcing data points!
I am shocked, absolutely shocked, that Anthropic ARR has likely gone vertical in October after they cut token prices.
Except the exact same thing happened for the entire AI market, which is why GPU rental prices have surged while token prices declined.
$100b plus in year-end ARR looks possible again.
Perhaps as simple as buyers live higher and sellers live lower. Pretty simple stuff?
AI market colour:
TLDR; Two paths forwards:
1. If stocks keep falling - HFs still hold big positions on both sides so they'd have to dump their longs and buy back their shorts at the same time. Messy messy situation.
2. If stocks turnaround higher - HFs have a large amount of AI shorts on rn, so they'd have to buy those back = short squeeze territory.
So the current situation with AI stocks is that hedgies have pushed overall net exposure to the lowest level all year (latest GS PB data) with the L/S ratio for AI names near its lows.
Basically, that means there's a lot of room for them to get more long (cope, but true).
Across the entire book, HFs have mostly shorted against their longs rather than completely selling them, with short sales running at ~5x long buys in October MTD. That said, Tech has been hit from both sides with the record selling coming from long sales AND new shorts. FWIW, I don’t think there’s reason to panic since I highly doubt many funds out there are short the entire AI theme.
A lot of the longs are now concentrated in Mag 7 which is now a record ~22% of US net exposure. So in essence, the trade has been long stable megacaps, short the rest of the AI supply chain.
Funds don’t really have much room to add new long risk right now with gross already fairly elevated, so the way back for semis is by them covering shorts. A lot of the shorts recently have been put on in memory, photonics and the neoclouds, as well as Asian semis, so upside headroom is probably most significant in those areas.
Time will tell. Would not try to time bottoms here.
Good thing for France they banned his dumbass ideas, blatherings and general convicted thoughts. We think he should return his SPAC scam $
Chamath says bond vigilantes should take French yields to 8% and just break them so austerity and immigration finally get taken seriously
“I think you need to take France to like 8% and just break them. [And then all of a sudden, austerity measures, immigration, all this stuff’s going to be taken a lot seriously.] At least it’ll all be on the table and they’ll have to sort through. They will have to sort out what they’re willing to give up."
"But right now, if you can skate through this moment, then these things continue to fester. And it is a tinderbox that at some point, again, we know, again, just to use the analogy of Kristallnacht, we know what the trail of breadcrumbs can lead to in terms of fomenting this societal rage. You cannot allow that to happen."
"And so the government has a responsibility now to nip this in the bud in a structural way. And I think the people have a responsibility to understand the numeric reality in which they are living. They are living in a state that is spending more than any communist utopia that they hoped to achieve."
"Yet the outcomes are broken, which means the system is broken. And you need to reset that. And the government will not reset it on its own. And so the bond vigilantes will have to do it for them.”
For all the blind bulls pointing to GPU rental prices, our pals at $NBIS now have real time rental rates on their site. The GB300 we hope is a "mistake"
StreetSignal retweeted
Replying to @StreetSignal__
Lake Mariner has an investment-grade backstop- is financed, the debt trades exceptionally well, and the project is in delivery; CB-4 this quarter.
Justified in Kentucky HAS an investment grade backstop COMMITTED. And YES well structured agreements enable responsible collocation companies to preserve economics in a higher cost debt environment.
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StreetSignal—Our DWDM History Lesson
OCT 17, 2026
Who remembers what DWDM stands for—and how Patrick Nettles, then CEO of Ciena, helped introduce it to the world in the mid-1990s? Back then, Gary Smith, now Ciena’s longtime CEO, was just the head of sales, complete with that unmistakable British accent.
Yesterday’s Saturday edition is Part A—the historical foundation for tomorrow’s main event. We’re going back to the Nettles and Smith era at Ciena, when DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) fundamentally changed the economics of the Internet, unlocking extraordinary growth in bandwidth, traffic, and infrastructure investment.
Today, in Part B, we connect the dots between the Internet buildout of the 1990s and today’s AI infrastructure supercycle. Does greater efficiency unleash even more demand, or eventually undermine the economics of the buildout? What does history tell us about the opportunities, the risks, and where we might be in this cycle?
No, we aren’t Ed Zitron, George Noble, or Jim Chanos, who vividly remembers—and profited from—Enron’s infamous “capacity trading.” Nor are we Shay Boloor or Dylan Patel, the latter having made a fortune staying ahead of the curve analyzing AI. Not a doomsayer or a cheerleader.
We are StreetSignal. We invest, analyze, and share the institutional memory investors need to navigate cycles. That is before everyone was a bottleneck investing guru. Yep, each cycle has them. In the 1990s it was Alberto Vilar of Amerindo Investment Advisors fame and subsequent demise ending in fraud charges. Today, you pick your genius villain. Either way, understanding what happened before is often the key to recognizing what’s happening now—and what comes next.
Saturday is the history lesson. Sunday is the investment playbook.
One of the most important developments of the late 1990s, and one that most investors today probably don’t remember, was Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, or DWDM. Until then, the conventional wisdom was that if you wanted to carry substantially more internet traffic, you needed more fiber in the ground. That meant digging trenches, laying cable, securing rights of way and spending billions. DWDM changed that equation. By transmitting multiple wavelengths, or colors, of light simultaneously through a single strand of glass, optical equipment makers could dramatically increase the amount of data carried over existing fiber. What initially might have required dozens of separate fibers could increasingly be accomplished with one. And as the technology improved, the number of wavelengths and the capacity of each kept rising. Companies like Ciena, Nortel and Lucent were at the center of this revolution.
Sound familiar? We had our DeepSeek moment in AI, which briefly looked like it might be another DWDM moment. But so far, Jevons paradox—the John Sidgmore/UUNET story of today—has worked handsomely, even as each new generation of NVIDIA GPUs delivers dramatically more tokens per dollar.
Think about what that meant for the telecom companies that had just spent billions building networks on the assumption that bandwidth would remain scarce. They were racing to install more physical capacity at precisely the moment technology was multiplying the capacity of the fiber already in the ground. DWDM didn’t single-handedly cause the telecom bust; there was also enormous overbuilding, too much debt and plenty of questionable demand forecasts. But it made the supply problem considerably worse. Internet traffic continued growing at extraordinary rates, yet the amount of available bandwidth grew even faster. And once the fiber was installed, the marginal cost of selling additional bandwidth was relatively low. Operators started competing aggressively on price to fill their networks. The supposed scarcity premium disappeared, bandwidth prices collapsed and billions of dollars of infrastructure investment suddenly looked considerably less attractive. The irony was that the internet ultimately became far larger than even its biggest promoters imagined. That didn’t save the investors who financed its early infrastructure.
Now consider AI. We hear constantly that compute is sold out for years, that power is constrained and that demand will absorb everything the industry can possibly build. Perhaps. But DWDM is a reminder that supply isn’t simply a function of how many data centers or GPUs you install. It’s also a function of how much useful work each dollar of infrastructure can perform. Better chips, custom ASICs, model distillation, quantization, caching and more efficient inference software can dramatically increase effective compute capacity without a corresponding increase in capital spending. There are differences, of course. Power connections and physical data centers cannot be multiplied by a software upgrade, and lower inference costs may unleash enough new demand to absorb much of the efficiency improvement. But the question for investors is the same one they should have asked in 1999: What happens to the economics of supposedly sold-out infrastructure if technology allows the industry to deliver vastly more capacity than anyone anticipated? The demand can be right, the technology can change the world, and the people financing the buildout can still lose an enormous amount of money.
Elon Musk alone, through SpaceX, is talking about adding 10 gigawatts of AI compute capacity in 2027. That’s potentially $600 billion in capital expenditures from ONE player, if we take him at his word. Obviously, there is a timing issue between announcing that capacity, building it, energizing it and actually turning it on. But isn’t that a bit like fiber in the late 1990s? Back then, the industry spent enormous sums building networks based on extrapolations of seemingly insatiable Internet traffic growth. And the demand was real. The Internet did change everything. The problem was that capacity ultimately arrived faster than the revenues needed to justify it, and the economics of that capacity changed dramatically along the way.
Which brings us back to DWDM and our discussion of Ciena. What happens if AI has its own DWDM moment? Back then, dense wavelength division multiplexing dramatically increased the amount of traffic that could travel over existing fiber, effectively multiplying supply without requiring a proportional increase in physical infrastructure. What if a breakthrough in inference efficiency, model architecture, memory or software suddenly allows the industry to generate 5x or 10x more useful intelligence from the same installed compute? Haven’t we already seen hints of this with DeepSeek and successive generations of NVIDIA GPUs? Yes, Jevons paradox says cheaper inference should unleash more demand, and so far it has. But what if the supply curve shifts faster than the demand curve, even as demand continues exploding? That is exactly what happened in telecom. The bears today would argue open source models are just that.
Now consider the economics. Musk has reportedly been able to rent compute at rates implying one- to two-year paybacks. Insane economics, and arguably only sustainable in a market where customers are panicked about securing scarce capacity. But 10 gigawatts alone, at our illustrative assumptions, could require roughly $300 billion in annual revenues somewhere at the model or application layer to justify the investment. Sure, Grok will consume some of that capacity, but how much? And what happens to those extraordinary rental economics when this much new supply arrives?
Now add Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and everyone else. Yes, there is some double counting, particularly where hyperscalers are renting capacity to the very model providers whose demand supposedly justifies the spending. But if the industry ultimately adds another 30 gigawatts of AI capacity, at $20–30 billion of required annual revenue per gigawatt, we are talking about $600–900 billion in incremental annual revenue needed somewhere in the ecosystem. And what happens if an AI version of DWDM arrives while all that capacity is still under construction? Suddenly, the same demand can be served with a fraction of the originally anticipated infrastructure, just as the industry prepares to bring enormous new supply online.
That doesn’t mean AI “fails”. Quite the opposite. The Internet was one of the greatest technological and economic revolutions in history, yet the companies financing its infrastructure suffered some of the greatest capital destruction investors have ever witnessed. The winners were ultimately the users of cheap bandwidth, not necessarily the owners of the networks. Could AI follow the same path, where intelligence becomes ubiquitous, consumption explodes, and the economics of supplying that intelligence deteriorate? The question isn’t whether AI changes the world. We think it does. The question is whether the capital markets are confusing an extraordinary technological revolution with an equally extraordinary investment opportunity for everyone funding its infrastructure. Those are two very different things.
Disclaimer: StreetSignal is an independent financial news and market commentary publication. We aggregate, curate, summarize, and comment on information from public filings, company presentations, conference calls, news sources, third-party research, and other publicly available materials. Any opinions, interpretations, or views expressed—including whether developments may be positive or negative for a company, industry, or security—reflect our editorial judgment at the time of publication and are provided solely for informational and educational purposes.
StreetSignal is not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer, and nothing contained herein constitutes investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. While we believe the information presented is derived from sources considered reliable, we make no representation or warranty as to its accuracy, completeness, or timeliness.
Markets, facts, and circumstances change rapidly. Unless expressly stated otherwise, StreetSignal undertakes no obligation to update, revise, or correct previously published content, opinions, estimates, or narratives in light of new information or subsequent events. What’s “most actionable” (cards with this label in StreetSignal) is inherently subjective and depends on your individual goals, risk tolerance, and circumstances. This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment, legal, or financial advice.
Copyright © 2026 StreetSignal. All rights reserved. Redistribution, reproduction, forwarding, or commercial use of any portion of this publication without prior written permission is prohibited.
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One of the reasons I've been adding more $NBIS is that Nebius is suppose to have 5 GW of contracted power by end of 2026 but only ~0.6 GW active meaning nearly 90% of that secured capacity has yet to come online.
Whats even better is that Nebius already has so much of the power needed for its next phase of growth with active capacity projected to more than triple to 2 GW by 2028 and reach 3.5 GW by 2030 without needing to secure additional power through 2028.
And I think bigger opportunity is how much revenue Nebius can generate from every MW as its full stack infrastructure and Token Factory move it beyond simply renting GPUs with older GPU prices already up ~30%, contract values exceeding $20M per MW and some deals paying back in under two years.
Everyone knows the here and now case in AI. Memory is tight thru 2029, LTAs. Compute is so so tight look at rental rates. Etc
For once would be nice if people would write what could go wrong “quickly”. Poke a hole in the bull case.
It reminds me of a story. Robert Bugbee CEO of STNG. You would call him and he would quote LR2 rates thru the roof. Customers begging for locking in rates for long and longer durations. Supply coming online wouldn’t be fast enough. The order book was too small to offset the growing route miles. Etc etc. In a flash, it was over. IMO2020 was not a generational change. It was a moment in time in a cycle.
For AI, follow the gigs being sold by NVDA, AMD, AVGO and MRVL vs the frontier models revenues. Of course add open source to it with less potential profits per token. That is where the tell will be if things suddenly slow and supply catches up with demand.
BofA on AI comparison to the dotcom:
"Unlike the idle fiber of 2000, deployed AI infrastructure runs near 100% utilization, and even older A100/H100/B200 (2020/2022/2024 launch, respectively) GPU rental rates are up 12% -37% YTD, a sign of scarcity, not glut"
$NVDA $AMD $NBIS $GOOGL $MSFT $META $AMZN
Think we have our best written historical piece yet on AI vs DWDM. Proud of the team. Comes out at 12pm EST on StreetSignal.substack.com
Vivek would like the stocks here, 300% here or 50% lower. He and most sellsiders negative software on lows remember then after bounce find the ones to pump.
Reiterate my buy on…..
One thing that struck me this week is Microsoft wants to do all inference w internal ASIC. They have been $nvda largest customer to date.
NVDA, AVGO, MU — BofA's Arya: chip stocks already trade like post crash Cisco
+ BofA analyst Vivek Arya says Nvidia, Broadcom and Micron are already priced like Cisco after the dot com crash. "Investors are paying post crash multiples for a cycle that hasn't crashed," he wrote in a note dated Friday, per Benzinga.
+ By his math the three trade at about 13 times forward earnings on average, inside the 10 to 20 times range Cisco sat in after the bubble burst. The catch: those multiples only hold if earnings forecasts do. Lower estimates would make the stocks look less cheap at the same prices.
+ The note landed with chip stocks staring at a weekly drop of about 10%. As of Friday morning SOXX was down 9.8% for the week after eight straight daily declines, with Micron off 12.5%, Broadcom 7.1% and Nvidia 5.4%. Memory names slid after CXMT said it plans server memory on a smaller cell design by year end, and Wednesday's hot inflation print added fuel.
The irony is the crash may never come. TrendForce projects Q4 DRAM contract prices up 10 to 15% and NAND up 15 to 20%, which is the earnings backdrop that would keep those 13x multiples honest. If memory pricing holds through Q4, the "post crash" label is just a discount on growth.






















