How many young AI cloud providers can the market, and Nvidia, support?

That’s one of the big questions after a week in which investors worried about the data center buildout and the risks that its unproven participants, known as neoclouds, are taking. Those risks include loading up on debt (CoreWeave) or trying to go public without much of a track record (Firmus and Nscale). Firmus abruptly pulled its public offering last week while shares of CoreWeave and its smaller rivals fell around 20%. The concerns even hit bigger AI cloud providers like Oracle.

Data center and neocloud executives told me there’s a limit to the number of AI cloud providers that can exist, even if Nvidia provides many of them with investment or backstops.