The Compute Build-Out
A visual dossier on the capital, power, and depreciation behind the AI infrastructure cycle.
A dossier is not a letter. It is a folder — charts, diagrams, fragments of argument, and the occasional archival image, arranged so that a serious reader can sit with the whole shape of a question in an afternoon.
This one concerns the compute build-out: the new heavy industry that the screen keeps insisting is weightless.
The argument, developed at length in The Cost of Light, is simple to state and uncomfortable to hold: this is railroads, not software. The returns will be set by the cost of power and the speed of depreciation, not by the elegance of the models.
The rest of this letter is reserved for subscribers.
- ·The full chart book — power, capex, and depreciation curves
- ·Site-by-site notes on the build-out's geography
- ·The financing map across hyperscaler and neocloud balance sheets
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