By the Numbers · Standing Tracker · Updated Jul 2026

The AI Bubble Tracker

AI infrastructure spending is growing far faster than AI revenue, financed increasingly by circular vendor commitments and debt, while flattering depreciation assumptions overstate the profits funding it. Either revenue closes the gap, or capex cracks.

What would change our mind

01AI revenue grows faster than capex for two consecutive quarters

02GPU rental prices hold firm through a supply wave

03Total token spend (price x volume) rises despite per-token price declines

04A hyperscaler voluntarily shortens server depreciation lives without an earnings shock

The Panel

Data Center Construction

Spend

US data-center construction put in place, $M at a seasonally adjusted annual rate — Census C30, government-primary. The physical buildout: nearly 4x since January 2023, now more than half of all office construction.

Data center construction$59,307 M SAAR

MoM +0.6% · YoY +23%

Year-over-year change

View data

DATE	DATA CENTER CONSTRUCTION
May 2026	$59,307 M SAAR
Apr 2026	$58,977 M SAAR
Mar 2026	$58,121 M SAAR
Feb 2026	$57,361 M SAAR
Jan 2026	$56,211 M SAAR
Dec 2025	$55,461 M SAAR
Nov 2025	$53,043 M SAAR
Oct 2025	$54,260 M SAAR
Sep 2025	$50,700 M SAAR
Aug 2025	$49,052 M SAAR
Jul 2025	$47,810 M SAAR
Jun 2025	$46,850 M SAAR
May 2025	$48,210 M SAAR
Apr 2025	$52,818 M SAAR

Source: census.gov

Commercial Power Price

Spend

Data-center alley (Virginia) vs the national average — the buildout bidding up its own input. VA meters data centers as commercial customers, so this is the rate class that carries the signal.

Virginia10.3 cents/kWh

US average13.5 cents/kWh

Virginia: MoM +1.7% · YoY +14%US average: MoM -2.9% · YoY +4.8%

Year-over-year change

View data

DATE	VIRGINIA	US AVERAGE
Apr 2026	10.3 cents/kWh	13.5 cents/kWh
Mar 2026	10.2 cents/kWh	13.9 cents/kWh
Feb 2026	13 cents/kWh	14.4 cents/kWh
Jan 2026	11.4 cents/kWh	13.6 cents/kWh
Dec 2025	10.2 cents/kWh	13.6 cents/kWh
Nov 2025	10.3 cents/kWh	13.2 cents/kWh
Oct 2025	10.2 cents/kWh	13.5 cents/kWh
Sep 2025	9.96 cents/kWh	14 cents/kWh
Aug 2025	9.46 cents/kWh	13.9 cents/kWh
Jul 2025	10.2 cents/kWh	14.1 cents/kWh
Jun 2025	9.43 cents/kWh	13.5 cents/kWh
May 2025	8.99 cents/kWh	12.9 cents/kWh
Apr 2025	9.03 cents/kWh	12.9 cents/kWh
Mar 2025	8.84 cents/kWh	13.2 cents/kWh

Source: eia.gov

Virginia Commercial Power Volume

Spend

Electricity actually consumed by the rate class that contains data-center alley — demand that can't be faked.

Virginia commercial6,832 M kWh

MoM +0.9% · YoY +5.7%

Year-over-year change

View data

DATE	VIRGINIA COMMERCIAL
Apr 2026	6,832 M kWh
Mar 2026	6,772 M kWh
Feb 2026	6,587 M kWh
Jan 2026	7,317 M kWh
Dec 2025	7,072 M kWh
Nov 2025	6,413 M kWh
Oct 2025	6,957 M kWh
Sep 2025	7,094 M kWh
Aug 2025	8,159 M kWh
Jul 2025	7,553 M kWh
Jun 2025	7,412 M kWh
May 2025	6,681 M kWh
Apr 2025	6,465 M kWh
Mar 2025	6,399 M kWh

Source: eia.gov

GPU Rental Price

Pricing

Median listed $/GPU-hr across ~50 providers (floor and ceiling tracked in the data). The gap between generations is the market's own depreciation schedule. H100 history before Jul 2026 reconstructed from Silicon Data's marketplace-tier index.

B200 (current gen)$5.56 /hr

H100 (last gen)$2.44 /hr

H100 (last gen): YoY +22%

View data

DATE	B200 (CURRENT GEN)	H100 (LAST GEN)
Jul 2026	$5.56 /hr	$2.44 /hr
Oct 2025	—	$1.95 /hr
Jun 2025	—	$2 /hr
Mar 2025	—	$2.29 /hr
Sep 2024	—	$2.58 /hr

Source: getdeploying.com

Market-Implied Bubble Odds

Belief

Polymarket: “AI bubble burst in 2026?” — what the market pays for the thesis.

Yes price

16.2%▼ 0.7%

as of Jul 2026 · 2 obs — series accumulating

Source: polymarket.com

Watching

The Gap: Big-4 capex vs AI revenue

Aggregate hyperscaler capex run-rate vs aggregate AI revenue. The masthead number.

Spend · quarterly

—

TSMC monthly revenue YoY

Best high-frequency upstream series since ASML stopped publishing quarterly bookings (Q1 2026).

Spend · monthly

—

Hyperscaler capex guidance (aggregate FY)

Sum of most recent full-year capex guidance: AMZN + GOOG + META + MSFT. Guidance revisions ARE the story.

Spend · quarterly

—

Disclosed GPU/server useful lives

Per-hyperscaler depreciation assumptions from 10-Q footnotes, with change log. The Burry axis.

Financing · quarterly

—

Signed-not-started datacenter lease commitments

Off-balance-sheet obligations (Moody's: $662B as of Feb 2026).

Financing · quarterly

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Circular-deal tally (cumulative announced)

Running total of interlocking vendor-financing commitments (NVDA->OpenAI, OpenAI->Oracle, etc).

Financing · episodic

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Disclosure withdrawal watch

Metrics companies stopped publishing. ASML quarterly bookings (Q1 2026) is entry #1.

Belief · episodic

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