If you're trying to make sense of the circular deals in AI, I made a handy interactive website about them. The data comes from FT Alphaville citing Sona Asset Management. Click any company to see who has promised it money and who it has promised money to.
The money often moves in a loop. First, a chipmaker invests in an AI lab. Second, the lab uses the money to rent compute from a cloud company. Third, the cloud company buys the chips. Each company can be an investor, supplier and customer of the others.
The closest historical parallel is late-1990s US telecom, when telephone equipment makers did the same for phone companies. The phone companies laid fiber cables ahead of the traffic. The traffic arrived years later than the lenders had expected.
Such a supplier expects strong demand, because it risks its own money. The customer cannot yet pay from its own revenue. The spending pays off only if companies and people outside the loop (us basically) pay enough for AI. They need to pay before the chips get old.
The map is at ai-money-map.vercel.app