State of the Neoclouds 2026

As of October 2026, 536 companies sell GPU capacity outside the hyperscalers, in 45 home countries. 74% were built to rent GPUs; the rest are telcos, national supercomputing centers, bitcoin miners and power developers that added them. Half are American, and 53% of the GPU-native operators employ 50 people or fewer.

The money sits at the top. Ten operators hold 87% of disclosed funding, and investment-grade GPU debt has reached only the largest. The numbers below come from our Neocloud Directory and public filings.

Who sells GPU capacity

399 operators are GPU-native. They are neoclouds, GPU cloud and bare-metal hosts, serverless inference platforms, marketplaces and VC-backed clusters. A neocloud lives on the spread between its GPU-hour price and the cost of owning the GPU.

The other 137 added GPUs to a business they already had: a telco network, a national supercomputer, a bitcoin mine, a power plant or a colocation hall. For a lender, the label decides whose cash is at stake. A telco or a miner has other revenue, other creditors and other collateral competing for the same dollars.

Where neoclouds are based

226 operators are American. That is 51% of the 439 with a known home market. No other country has more than 20.

Europe is second and fragmented. Its 100 operators are spread across 23 countries, none with more than 18. In Asia-Pacific, 29 of 79 operators are sovereign clouds; in North America, 6 of 246 are. The Middle East and Africa hold 15.

Home market understates reach. 107 operators list capacity or offices in two or more countries, and 36 in five or more.

How old neoclouds are

Half the GPU-native operators predate the AI boom. 114 of the 229 GPU-native operators with a known founding year started before 2017. Most began as web hosts and dedicated-server providers, then added GPU racks. Their operating history is longer than their GPU history, and a decade of hosting receivables tells a lender more than one year of GPU revenue.

The new wave is real but small. 65 operators were founded in 2022 or later, 22% of the 297 we can date. 47 of the 64 with a known size employ 50 people or fewer. The 2017-2021 cohort (73 operators) carries the crypto cycle: 15 have bitcoin-mining roots.

How big neoclouds are

53% of GPU-native operators employ 50 people or fewer. That is 139 of the 260 with a known headcount. Only 27 employ more than 500.

The large end is mostly incumbents. 41% of operators that added GPUs to another business employ more than 500, against 10% of GPU-native ones. For a lender, a 20-person borrower makes key-person risk and a backup operator part of the credit file.

The mix differs by type. 65% of bare-metal hosts employ 50 or fewer, against 44% of neoclouds and 15% of sovereign clouds.

Who funds and owns them

Ten operators hold 87% of disclosed funding. 63 of 536 operators disclose an equity total, $16.0B combined. The median raise is $26M, and 47 of the 63 raised less than $100M.

Ownership is known for 179 operators. 72 are venture-backed or privately held, 54 belong to a larger group, 42 are listed and 11 are bootstrapped. The listed ones file their debt in public; the public neoclouds list tracks them.

How neoclouds borrow

Rated GPU debt arrived in 2026. CoreWeave closed a delayed-draw term loan of up to $8.5B in March, rated A3 by Moody's, with its floating tranche at SOFR + 2.25%. ^{[1]CoreWeave, "CoreWeave Closes Landmark $8.5 Billion Financing Facility, Achieving First Investment-Grade Rated GPU-backed Financing" (March 31, 2026)https://investors.coreweave.com/news/news-details/2026/CoreWeave-Closes-Landmark-8-5-Billion-Financing-Facility-Achieving-First-Investment-Grade-Rated-GPU-backed-Financing/default.aspx} Lambda closed a $1.0B fixed-rate loan at 6.78% in October, rated Baa1 and backed by two investment-grade offtakers, the customers contracted to buy the compute. ^{[2]Lambda, "Lambda closes $1 billion senior secured fixed rate financing" (October 1, 2026)https://lambda.ai/blog/lambda-closes-1-billion-senior-secured-fixed-rate-financing}

The long tail has neither the contracts nor the scale. Small GPU loans reach the bond market only inside lenders' mixed equipment pools. GPU loans are about 15% of the collateral in Stonebriar's roughly $869M equipment asset-backed securities (ABS) deal, and about 20% of Wingspire's deal of more than $407M. ^{[3]Bloomberg via The Star, "GPU financing filters into ABS with Stonebriar, Wingspire deals" (October 7, 2026)https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2026/10/07/gpu-financing-filters-into-abs-with-stonebriar-wingspire-deals} How those structures work is in private credit and ABS for GPU financing.

The middle is the gap. Between the two sit 174 GPU-native operators with 11 to 200 employees, and most of the 40 operators that disclosed raising $10M to $99M. They are too small for a rated loan or a bond, and no public benchmark prices their debt.

Public neocloud and GPU debt deals, 2025-2026

Listed operators disclose their financings, so the top of the ladder is visible. Every deal below is from a company release or SEC filing. More deals are in the GPU Financing Tracker.

Sovereign clouds and AI factories

91 operators sell sovereign or national AI capacity. The directory counts 64 sovereign AI clouds and 27 national AI factories in 37 countries. NVIDIA said its sovereign AI business more than tripled in fiscal 2026, to over $30 billion. ^{[12]NVIDIA, Q4 fiscal 2026 earnings call transcript (February 25, 2026)https://s201.q4cdn.com/141608511/files/doc_financials/2026/q4/NVDA-Q4-2026-Earnings-Call-25-February-2026-5_00-PM-ET.pdf}

Europe builds factories; Asia builds clouds. Europe hosts 25 of the 27 AI factories, mostly national supercomputing centers funded through EuroHPC, which had selected 19 AI Factories by March 2026. ^{[13]EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, "AI Factories / AI Gigafactories" presentation (March 2026)https://eu-space.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2026-06/03_Pelegrin_AIF%20-%20AIGF%202026.pdf} Its call for up to seven AI Gigafactories is open until December 3, 2026. ^{[14]EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, call for the selection of AI Gigafactory consortia, EUROHPC-2026-CEI-AIGF-01 (published July 30, 2026)https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/call-tenders-selection-artificial-intelligence-gigafactory-consortia-and-establishment-ai_en} Asia-Pacific hosts 29 of the 64 sovereign clouds, led by national telcos and internet groups. South Korea announced more than 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs across government and industry in October 2025. ^{[15]NVIDIA, "NVIDIA, South Korea Government and Industrial Giants Build AI Infrastructure and Ecosystem" (October 31, 2025)https://investor.nvidia.com/news/press-release-details/2025/NVIDIA-South-Korea-Government-and-Industrial-Giants-Build-AI-Infrastructure-and-Ecosystem-to-Fuel-Korea-Innovation-Industries-and-Jobs/} India's AI Mission has onboarded more than 38,000 GPUs for shared use. ^{[16]Government of India, Digital India, "IndiaAI Mission expands AI ecosystem with affordable compute and startup support" (2026)https://www.digitalindia.gov.in/press_release/indiaai-mission-expands-ai-ecosystem-with-affordable-compute-and-startup-support/}

These are big organizations. 25 of the 48 sovereign clouds with a known size employ more than 1,000 people. Their GPUs sit on telco and state balance sheets that rarely need GPU-backed debt, and their capacity is allocated by policy: research access, national champions and public-sector tenants come first.

Bitcoin miners turned AI landlords

34 operators have bitcoin-mining roots. 25 are miners pivoting to AI, and 9 are neoclouds that started in mining, such as IREN, TeraWulf, Applied Digital and Crusoe. 22 are in North America.

The halving pushed them. Hashprice, a miner's daily revenue per unit of computing power, fell to a record $49.44 per petahash per day after the April 2024 halving. ^{[17]Luxor Hashrate Index, weekly roundup (April 29, 2024)https://hashrateindex.com/blog/hashrate-index-roundup-april-29-2024/} It hit a new low of $27.74 on June 6, 2026. ^{[18]Luxor Hashrate Index, "Luxor Hashrate Lookback Series: June 2026" (July 10, 2026)https://hashrateindex.com/blog/luxor-hashrate-lookback-series-june-2026/} Miners own what AI tenants lack: energized sites and signed power contracts.

The contracts are long and large: about $153B across 24 disclosed deals. Most are data center leases of 10 to 20 years to AI labs, hyperscalers and neoclouds, and several carry a Google backstop on the tenant's payments. ^{[19]American Compute, Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI: disclosed AI contracts, each linked to its filing or press report (October 2026)https://www.amcompute.com/bitcoin-miners-ai} Every miner and deal is on our bitcoin miners AI map.

GPU rents and resale prices

New-GPU rents ran hot in September. Ornn's B200 index, an average of transacted rental prices, rose from $6.89 per GPU-hour on Sep 10 to a three-month high of $8.14 on Sep 29, then eased to $7.46 by Oct 9, 8% off the peak. ^{[20]Ornn, Compute Price Index OCPI-B200 daily settles, with the H100 and H200 indexes (read October 9, 2026)https://data.ornn.com/markets/b200} The same index was $2.31 in early March. ^{[21]Tomasz Tunguz, "GPU Spot Prices Surge 114% in Six Weeks," citing the Ornn index (April 27, 2026)https://tomtunguz.com/b200-gpu-pricing-spot-market-model-releases/}

Used GPUs moved the other way. The GPU index in our Rack Report, which tracks resale prices of used data center GPUs (first half of 2025 = 100), was 75 in August: down 12.3% on the month and 22.1% on the year. Used H200 nodes listed at $348,500, above the roughly $340,000 volume price of a new one. ^{[22]American Compute, Rack Report, October 2026 issue (data through August 2026)https://www.amcompute.com/rack-report}

Rents decide whether a small operator covers its debt service. Resale decides what its lender recovers if it does not. How fast GPUs lose value is in our GPU residual value report.

How we counted

• Coverage. The Neocloud Directory lists companies that own or operate GPUs and sell the capacity: GPU clouds, bare-metal hosts, AI factories, miners hosting AI and energy-backed campuses. Hyperscalers, colocation-only data centers, resellers and end users are left out. It is not a census; small private operators are the likeliest to be missing. Our October 2026 survey found no public GPU offering for 66 of the 536, mostly web and VPS hosts; they stay in the counts.
• Types. Each operator has one type, assigned by our team. GPU-native means neoclouds, GPU cloud and bare-metal operators, serverless platforms, marketplaces and VC-backed clusters. Mining roots come from public company histories.
• Self-reported fields. Headquarters, founding year and headcount band come from company websites and LinkedIn. Coverage: home market 439 of 536, founding year 297, headcount 358, ownership 179, funding 63.
• Funding. Equity raised as disclosed by the company or reported in the press, with ranges taken at the midpoint. Treat the distribution as indicative.
• Dates. Directory rows were updated between June and October 2026. Public prices and deals carry their own dates.

The full directory of all 536 operators, with contacts, is a paid product: the Neocloud Directory. Profiles of the largest operators are free on our company pages.

References

1. CoreWeave, "CoreWeave Closes Landmark $8.5 Billion Financing Facility, Achieving First Investment-Grade Rated GPU-backed Financing" (March 31, 2026)
2. Lambda, "Lambda closes $1 billion senior secured fixed rate financing" (October 1, 2026)
3. Bloomberg via The Star, "GPU financing filters into ABS with Stonebriar, Wingspire deals" (October 7, 2026)
4. Galaxy Digital, Form 8-K: credit agreement for Galaxy Helios I with Deutsche Bank (August 15, 2025)
5. TeraWulf, "TeraWulf Inc. Announces Pricing of $3.2 Billion of Senior Secured Notes" (October 16, 2025)
6. Cipher Mining, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1: pricing of $1.4 billion of senior secured notes (November 5, 2025)
7. Applied Digital, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1: pricing of $2.35 billion of senior secured notes (November 13, 2025)
8. Applied Digital, "Applied Digital Announces Pricing of $2.15 Billion of Senior Secured Notes to fund Polaris Forge 2 Campus" (March 4, 2026)
9. Applied Digital, "Applied Digital Announces Pricing of $1.59 Billion of Senior Secured Notes to fund the Fourth Building at Polaris Forge 1" (June 9, 2026)
10. CoreWeave, "CoreWeave Closes $3.1 Billion Loan Facility, Expanding Access to Public Markets for GPU-Backed Financing" (May 18, 2026)
11. Nebius, "Nebius raises $775 million in first secured debt financing to accelerate global buildout" (July 17, 2026)
12. NVIDIA, Q4 fiscal 2026 earnings call transcript (February 25, 2026)
13. EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, "AI Factories / AI Gigafactories" presentation (March 2026)
14. EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, call for the selection of AI Gigafactory consortia, EUROHPC-2026-CEI-AIGF-01 (published July 30, 2026)
15. NVIDIA, "NVIDIA, South Korea Government and Industrial Giants Build AI Infrastructure and Ecosystem" (October 31, 2025)
16. Government of India, Digital India, "IndiaAI Mission expands AI ecosystem with affordable compute and startup support" (2026)
17. Luxor Hashrate Index, weekly roundup (April 29, 2024)
18. Luxor Hashrate Index, "Luxor Hashrate Lookback Series: June 2026" (July 10, 2026)
19. American Compute, Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI: disclosed AI contracts, each linked to its filing or press report (October 2026)
20. Ornn, Compute Price Index OCPI-B200 daily settles, with the H100 and H200 indexes (read October 9, 2026)
21. Tomasz Tunguz, "GPU Spot Prices Surge 114% in Six Weeks," citing the Ornn index (April 27, 2026)
22. American Compute, Rack Report, October 2026 issue (data through August 2026)
23. Synergy Research Group, "Neocloud Market Forecast to Approach $400B by 2031" (April 2, 2026)
24. CoreWeave, second quarter 2026 results (August 11, 2026)
25. CoreWeave, second quarter 2025 results (August 12, 2025)