Artificial intelligence is often described as an intangible revolution. Its near-term economic footprint, however, is strikingly physical. Training and deploying frontier models requires large quantities of specialised chips, electricity, cooling, network equipment, and purpose-built data centre capacity.
The memory industry has a habit of turning shortages into gluts. Demand for dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), which holds data while processors work, has historically followed spending on PCs, smartphones and servers. When prices rise, manufacturers invest in more capacity, which can arrive just as demand weakens. Factories still carry high fixed costs, leaving profits exposed when chip prices fall.
Building a data centre in Europe takes about two years. Connecting it to the grid can take five times as long, with waits of seven to ten years in the main hubs. For hyperscalers racing to add AI capacity, that wait is now the biggest obstacle, and it has changed what is scarce in European power no longer generation, but access to the grid.
Download PDF Introduction The AI trade is no longer behaving as one single boom, as the debate over which parts of the industry will actually capture the profits has intensified among investors. After two years in which artificial intelligence pushed valuations higher across semiconductors, cloud platforms, model labs, and enterprise Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Over the past decade, software became the number one business model for start-ups and the go-to solution for entrepreneurs chasing success. The asset-light business model characterized by recurring revenue and high operating leverage attracted investors from all over the financial markets. It was particularly attractive to private Read more…
Download PDF Introduction 2025 concluded with the resurgence of megadeals (transactions valued over $5bn), as encapsulated by headlines such as Netflix’s [NASDAQ: NFLX] $82.7bn bid for Warner Bros. Discovery [NASDAQ: WBD]. In contrast to Q4 2024, total deal value has increased by 127.6%, with M&A activity rising by 19.1% for Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Recent discourse on the US economy has centered on a supposed AI-driven bubble. Nearly $1.5tn is being poured into data centers, microchips, and R&D in 2025, despite vague, circular business models. This has led regulators and experts (e.g., Michael Burry betting against Nvidia [NASDAQ: NVDA] and Palantir Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Europe is recalibrating its industrial strategy for an era of geopolitical rifts and economic rivalry. After decades of prioritizing open markets and strict competition policy, EU leaders are now increasingly willing to foster “European champions” in critical sectors to secure the continent’s strategic autonomy. Supply chain shocks Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Last year, we discussed how surging demand for data storage and processing – driven by streaming, e-commerce, and AI—propelled record investments in server infrastructure worldwide. There existed a large FOMO surrounding Data Centres and AI. Currently, with increasing investor pressure amid large Capex requirements and slow materialisation Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Generative AI has gone mainstream at a blistering pace worldwide. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, launched in late 2022, reached 100m users in just two months and was valued at around $29bn by January 2023. Now, on the verge of finalizing a new funding round, its valuation is expected to Read more…
Download PDF Introduction With so much information to store, almost every one of us currently uses the “invisible” space of the cloud. But it’s not that invisible. There is a physical place where all this data is processed, called a data center. When you buy space in iCloud, for example, Read more…
Download PDF Background The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has brought the semiconductor industry under the spotlight, resulting in a year of particularly high hype from investors, with constant stock spikes and new technological standards. With generative AI software gaining popularity over the past year, chipmakers’ performance has begun to catch Read more…
Download PDF Introduction With the AI trend currently dominating markets highlighted by NVIDIA’s earnings announcement this week, Palantir has gained a fresh breath of momentum over the last year. It has yet to reach its all-time high which was during the meme-stock frenzy in January of 2021 fuelled by redditors, Read more…
Download PDF Introduction In 2023, the global economy has exceeded expectations, with projected global GDP growth set to beat consensus forecasts from a year ago. Core inflation has seen a significant drop, plummeting from 6% in 2022 to 3% across economies recovering from the post-COVID price surges. Notably, the US Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Investment in defence tech start-up companies has surged over the past years as geopolitical tensions across the globe keep escalating. US venture capital firms raised their investments in defence start-ups from less than $16bn in 2019 to $33bn in 2022. The first five months of 2023 alone Read more…