All paths lead to neocloud: seven flavors of companies now selling AI compute
vaibhavbetter · x · 2026-09-07
Jessie Dong maps out why 'neocloud' now means many things: AI companies need ever more compute, renting gets expensive, and long-term contracts win, so everyone ends up selling compute.
She sorts players into seven categories: renting own GPUs (CoreWeave, Nebius, Lambda), starting from power and data centers (Crusoe, IREN, Nscale), aggregating compute (RunPod, Vast.ai, Akash), doing research/RL while selling compute (Prime Intellect, Together), building own chips and selling inference (Groq, Cerebras), and running inference across chips (Gimlet Labs). Her takeaway: at the 2026 pace, terminology changes every 60 days.
Related event: All Roads Lead to Neocloud: Seven Types of Compute Companies Converge(2 posts)→
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