AI Datacentres
Gowings Bros · AI Datacentre Thesis Screening
v1.1   May 2026

The deal-screening dashboard

A demand cascade that locates where money originates, and a scorecard responsive to three diagnostic inputs. The boutique Sydney-metro standalone sits inside the REIT and infrastructure fund thesis, with a sovereign-strategic adjacency on the government-mid segment.

Dashboard for AI datacentre investment thesis screening: a demand cascade and an interactive scorecard responsive to three diagnostic-input sliders.

The demand cascade

External customer revenue versus the recycled equity-to-compute loop. Indicative annualised flows for 2025 and 2026.

Consumer ~$5 to 8B / yr Developer / API ~$10 to 15B / yr Enterprise ~$30 to 50B / yr Government / sovereign $500B+ committed External customer revenue Frontier labs OpenAI, Anthropic, others Hyperscalers Azure, AWS, GCP, Meta Recycled equity and compute commitments Microsoft to OpenAI to Azure; Nvidia to OpenAI to Oracle AI infrastructure capex, 2026 $400B+ announced. Hyperscaler internal, neocloud, REIT, sovereign.

The recycled flow (coral, dashed) is not external revenue. Any underwriting that treats lab-side compute backlog as if it were external revenue should be discounted to the share that external customer revenue plausibly supports.

Thesis-by-question scorecard

Slide your priors on the three diagnostic inputs. The cells and the verdict on each thesis respond.

Three diagnostic inputs

Defaults reproduce the brief's central case. Each slider drives the four cells in its column and the verdict at the start of each row.

Q1. Enterprise renewal rate, next cycle 75%
60%80%100%
Q2. Share of lab compute commitments cleared by external (not recycled) revenue 25%
5%40%80%
Q3. GPU residual value at year four, USD per H100 $9,000
$4K$15K$30K
Thesis Q1. Enterprise revenue persistence Q2. Circular-flow exposure Q3. GPU residual value
Hyperscaler captive
AWS, Azure, GCP, Meta
Neocloud merchant
CoreWeave, Lambda, Nebius, Crusoe
REIT / infrastructure fund
Digital Realty, Equinix, Brookfield, KKR
Sovereign / strategic
Stargate, G42, HUMAIN, EU sovereign

Three favourable: deserves capital. Two favourable: capital, with structural protection. One favourable: caution; probably refuse. Zero favourable: refuse.

Australian application. REIT and infrastructure fund is the structural fit — power, shell, connection rights as the durable asset; GPU obsolescence with the tenant. Sovereign-strategic applies to government-mid specifically. Hyperscaler-captive is the comparator. Neocloud does not apply.

Self-contained companion. No tracking, no external calls. Source: Gowings Bros synthesis brief, May 2026. Indicative model