a16z: From Crypto Mining to AI Clouds, Neoclouds Face Rising Costs

The neocloud model is essentially a capital-intensity trade: miners who survived crypto winters are now betting that AI compute demand can outrun the depreciation curve on GPU fleets. That a16z frames profitability as the open question rather than revenue growth suggests the constraint has shifted from demand to financing and asset life. How these operators manage depreciation schedules and access to capital, relative to incumbents and to the AI labs themselves, is the variable worth tracking.