Deep dives

One company, read properly

Each deep dive takes one company in the AI chain and reads it from its own filings: what it sells, what the numbers show, what is working, what could break, and what would change our view. The week a company is company of the week, its deep dive is free to read; the rest of the time it is part of Insider.

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  This week
  GOOGLHyperscalers

  Alphabet

  A hyperscaler on both sides of the AI trade: its cloud grew 103% in a year, it spent more on buildings and machines in the quarter than its operations brought in, and it has started raising money to keep going.

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  Free the week of 9 November
  ETNPower & Cooling

  Eaton

  The grid end of the build: electrical sales were 75.8% of the quarter, the backlog is about $24.1bn, and debt more than doubled in six months to buy a thermal business — while Eaton reports no data-centre revenue line.

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  Free the week of 16 November
  AMATSemi Equipment

  Applied Materials

  The tools one layer below the foundry: Semiconductor Systems was 77.2% of a record $9,115m quarter, China's share of revenue fell from 35% to 28% while US revenue doubled, and Applied reports no AI revenue line and no backlog total.

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  Free the week of 23 November
  AAPLHyperscalers

  Apple

  It designs the silicon and names artificial intelligence as a cost, not as revenue: the September quarter was $114,477m, research and development was 10.2% of it, and capital expenditure was 2.0% — and Apple reports no AI revenue line.

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  Free the week of 30 November
  SPCXModel Labs

  SpaceX

  It is the one company in the model-labs layer that reports its AI business as a segment, and in the September quarter that segment, SI, was $7,560m of $14,575m of revenue and $16,444m of $19,593m of capital expenditure — the segment spent more than twice what it took in.

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  METAHyperscalers

  Meta

  It has told the market it will spend up to $145 billion this year to support its AI efforts, and has never disclosed a single dollar of AI revenue.

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  AVGOAccelerators

  Broadcom

  Its chief executive puts AI chip sales at $16.7 billion last quarter, more than half the total; the filings carry no AI revenue line, but they do carry a guarantee of up to $29 billion on one customer's AI leases.

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  MSFTHyperscalers

  Microsoft

  Its chief executive puts the AI business at a $37 billion annual run rate — a snapshot multiplied out to a year; the annual report has no AI line, but it does show $115.9 billion spent on buildings and machines in the year, and $24.1 billion of revenue from OpenAI, a company Microsoft owns about a quarter of.

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  PLTRApplications

  Palantir

  Revenue nearly doubled from a year earlier, to $1.935 billion in the quarter, on software it sells as an AI platform; the filings carry no AI revenue line and split the money only by who pays — with twenty customers about 40% of the past year's revenue.

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  NVDAAccelerators

  Nvidia

  It sold $89 billion of data-centre products in a quarter; the same filings show it now helping to pay for that demand — a guarantee of up to $105 billion on OpenAI's data-centre leases, $36 billion of commitments to rent capacity back from the clouds that buy its chips, and $51 billion of stakes in private companies.

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  TSMFoundry & Memory

  TSMC

  The factory the chips layer cannot route around: two-thirds of its revenue now comes from high performance computing, it keeps two-thirds of every dollar as gross profit, and it is spending about thirty cents of each dollar on new capacity.

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  VRTPower & Cooling

  Vertiv

  It sells the power and cooling AI racks run on, so its sales follow megawatts built, not chips shipped — and the order book that used to prove the demand is now published only once a year.

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