Digital infrastructure: The chips are up

Newer AI chips could expand the profit pool around data centres, but falling token prices and changing infrastructure requirements will make tenant and asset selection more decisive.

• European data-centre capacity absorbed 1.6 GW in Q2 2026, versus approximately 1.2 GW in full-year 2025, while short-term demand continues to exceed additions to live supply.
• Data centres accounted for around 41% of North American and European infrastructure M&A and greenfield transaction volumes through September 2026; strategic buyers represented about 55% of data-cententre M&A, up from 31% in 2025.
• L&G estimates that annual AI-lab token revenue could rise from about $21m/MW on Nvidia Hopper chips to approximately $86m/MW on Blackwell, while a neocloud charges $10m-$12m/MW and a data-centre operator earns $1.8m-$2.1m/MW in annual rent.
• Blackwell's liquid-cooling requirement raises capital expenditure and creates obsolescence risk, while bringing power online one year earlier may generate more revenue than the approximately $42m lifetime power-cost difference between the UK and Norway.
• Weighted average token prices fell from $2 per million tokens in the first half of 2026 to below $1 by September, although AI-chip rental prices remained comparatively resilient; closed models may preserve margins, whereas open models could stimulate usage while compressing revenue per token.

Takeaway: Digital infrastructure remains attractive, but investors should prioritise time-to-power, delivery certainty, liquid-cooling capability and tenants using efficient chips, while recognising that value may shift among AI labs, neoclouds and data-centre operators as token prices and chip economics evolve.