Neoclouds in 2026: the pressure builds

In October 2025, Uptime Intelligence described how a new breed of cloud providers, known as neoclouds, were absorbing risk in the burgeoning AI ecosystem (see Neoclouds: AI's shock absorbers).

Neoclouds are the broker-dealers of AI infrastructure: they match GPU supply to demand and are responsible for the brunt of GPU capacity planning. The report argued that if demand should fall, neoclouds and their investors — not hyperscalers, chip vendors or colocation providers — would be left holding most of the loss-generating assets.