Lily Jamali North America Technology correspondent, San Francisco

Reuters

A once-obscure corner of the AI ecosystem finds itself in the spotlight – and investors don't all like what they see.

Names like CoreWeave and Nebius are familiar to the tech set in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

These data centre companies, known as neocloud firms, run large warehouses packed with expensive computers, which they lease to major AI developers like Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta.

They're now the subject of one of Silicon Valley's most heated debates.

Many question whether neocloud firms are financially sound and what their recent stumbles tell us about the state of the AI economy.

Analysts at Gartner predict by 2030, 80% of neocloud firms will "cease independent operations", while Forrester's experts expect at least three of them to be imminently acquired "as finances get shaky".

Debt worries

Neocloud firms often finance themselves by signing long-term lease contracts with major tech customers who need quick…