저자: TomLee추정,소속Fundstrat · 외국인
요약 보기
AI 클라우드 인프라 수요가 전력·데이터센터 등 물리적 공급 부족을 낳아 다년간 투자 사이클이 형성된다고 주장. 2026년 클라우드 자본지출 8000억 달러, 2027년 1.3조 달러 전망. 엔비디아 데이터센터 매출 890억 달러(+117%), 수주잔고 2조 달러 이상 언급. 네비우스(NBIS), 오라클(ORCL), 코어위브(CRWV)를 전력 접근성·장기 수주잔고·선수금 측면에서 유망 종목으로 제시. 3년 계약 단가가 MW당 1000만→2000~2500만 달러로 상승했다고 언급.
다듬은 글
With global technology leaders predicting that cloud technology capital spending will reach $800 billion in 2026 and $1.3 trillion in 2027, the availability of physical infrastructure has replaced capital as the primary constraint to the development of artificial intelligence. Fundstrat strategist Tom Lee recently noted that this structural shortage of computing power is creating an unprecedented multi-year investment cycle in which access to energy and ready-made data centers are becoming the main factors for future business growth.
This forecast is entirely consistent with recent comments by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who stated that computing is now revenue, emphasizing that the physical power of the hardware is directly translating into accelerating revenue growth in the corporate sector. Independent research forecasts from SemiAnalysis estimate that total electricity demand for North American computing clusters will grow from 18 GW to over 42 GW by the end of the decade, highlighting acute energy supply shortages.
Memory giant Micron Technology and GPU leader Nvidia confirmed this relentless demand in their latest financial reports: Nvidia reported $89 billion in quarterly data center revenue, up 117% year-over-year, and mentioned an industry backlog exceeding $2 trillion . To capitalize on this momentum, dedicated cloud architects are moving away from short-term leases in favor of multibillion-dollar sovereign deployment deals, long-term “take-it-or- pay” contracts, and massive upfront customer payments.
Independent market estimates show that the value of three-year infrastructure contracts has increased from $10 million per megawatt in late 2025 to $20-25 million per megawatt in mid- 2026, with premium short-term auctions reaching prices of $50 million per megawatt. Evaluating leaders in this area requires looking not only at debt levels, but also at actual access to electricity, fulfillment of contractual obligations, and the efficiency of capital use on the balance sheet.
Let's start with Nebius Group NV, whose shares trade under the ticker NBIS. The company has made the final transition from a standard GPU rental provider to a specialized infrastructure architect for sovereign AI computing. In its second-quarter 2026 financial report, Nebius reported total revenue of $582.3 million, a 454% increase year-over- year, driven primarily by its cloud services platform, which brought in $575 million .
Annual revenue at the current rate increased to $3 billion at the end of June, significantly up from $1.9 billion at the end of March 2026 . Operational momentum is underpinned by strategic relationships in capital and infrastructure. Nvidia owns a 9.3% stake in Nebius following a $2 billion direct investment in March 2026, which provides Nebius with priority access to cutting-edge silicon architectures, including the Blackwell and Vera Rubin platforms.
On September 8, 2026, Nebius announced a landmark collaboration with Palantir Technologies to integrate Nebius computing endpoints directly into Palantir's secure enterprise environment. This integration provides direct access to commercial enterprises and financial institutions without individual contract negotiations, significantly reducing customer acquisition costs.
Management raised its 2026 contracted capacity target from 4.0 gigawatts to 5.0 gigawatts, strategically reserving 3.0 gigawatts of capacity to take advantage of rising spot market prices. Recent short-term capacity auctions have secured contract terms in the $40-$50 million per megawatt range, well above historical contract averages of $20-$25 million per megawatt.
Additionally, customer prepayment covers 50% to 60% of the associated capital costs, reducing the payback period for new data center deployments to approximately 22 months. With a liquidity position of $8.04 billion and a recent issuance of $5.75 billion in convertible bonds, Nebius is poised to grow its connected energy footprint to 2.0 gigawatts and achieve annual revenue of $28.57 billion by 2030.
Moving on to our second industry leader, Oracle Corporation trades on major exchanges under the ticker symbol ORCL. Oracle is aggressively establishing itself as the fourth-largest cloud hyperscaler , backing its ambitions with a huge portfolio of outstanding commitments that reached $664 billion in the first fiscal quarter of 2027.
This portfolio represents annual growth of $209 billion, with approximately $86.3 billion expected to be converted into recognized revenue over the next 12 months, effectively covering about 93% of management's total revenue forecast of $90 billion for fiscal 2027. In the first quarter of 2027, Oracle generated total revenue of $19.3 billion, up 30% year-over-year , while its cloud infrastructure segment grew 121% to $7.4 billion .
Operational efficiency remains exceptionally high across all operating assets : the company reports a 97.9% utilization rate across its entire operational compute base and receives an average price premium of 20% when renewing GPU contracts. A key factor in Oracle's capacity expansion is its flagship Abilene campus in Texas, built in partnership with OpenAI and SoftBank as part of the Stargate initiative, which enabled 850 MW of additional capacity in the first quarter alone.
To fund capital expenditures, which reached $28 billion in the first quarter, Oracle relies heavily on upfront payments from customers, attracting $11.4 billion in prepayments during the quarter. While the adjustment of permitting timelines for the 2.45 GW Project Jupiter facility in New Mexico has attracted short-term market attention, near- term supply targets are fully supported by the 1.4 GW Shackelford campus in Texas, which uses its own natural gas-fired generation to bypass delays in connecting to local grids.
Trading at about 16 times forward earnings , Oracle exhibits a distinctive valuation profile relative to historical hyperscaler averages, anchored by its popular enterprise database software, deeply embedded in global corporate supply chains. Moving directly to the third influential market participant, CoreWeave Incorporated operates under the ticker symbol CRWV.
CoreWeave continues to expand its specialized cloud platform, reporting second- quarter 2026 revenue of $2.58 billion , representing a 112% annual growth rate and beating consensus estimates. Adjusted EBITDA doubled year-over- year to $1.51 billion, delivering an industry-leading adjusted EBITDA margin of 59%.
The total order backlog reached $104.2 billion at the end of the second quarter, up 246% year-over-year , excluding more than $25 billion in new customer commitments received in the first weeks of the third quarter. Management updated its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion, projecting an annualized recurring revenue growth rate for the year-end in the range of $18.5 billion to $19.5 billion.
CoreWeave connected nearly 500 MW of active capacity during the second quarter, reaching 1.5 GW of active capacity, while increasing total contracted capacity to 4.2 GW with a strategic plan to reach 8 GW by 2030. To expand its customer base beyond AI labs , CoreWeave is pursuing a diversification strategy into manufacturing, life sciences, systems finance, and the public sector, securing major deals with clients such as Caterpillar and Leidos.
Additionally, in July 2026, the company increased prices by 25% across all platform SKUs to capture higher revenue from customers as workloads shift toward real-time data output. While CoreWeave's total debt is $35.07 billion, most of it is structured at the special project company level. These non-recourse debt instruments are backed by long-term, take-or- pay contracts with investment-grade counterparties such as Meta Platforms and Microsoft, ensuring full amortization of the debt at asset level over the initial terms of the contracts before the start of high-margin hardware refresh cycles.
In short, the rapid expansion of specialized AI infrastructure is changing the operational framework and metrics across the cloud computing sector. Nebius Group, Oracle and CoreWeave demonstrate how grid access, long-term order backlogs and strategic customer prepayments create sustainable operating leverage.
While capital intensity and debt burden require constant assessment, these three companies are at the very heart of the physical epicenter of the macroeconomic transformation of a generation.
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