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    LUMINAIRE - Illuminating the Age of Intelligence

    Circular Financing Loop Simulator

    When a chip vendor funds a model laboratory that then buys chips, part of the vendor's reported revenue was funded by the vendor. This model traces the money around one full cycle and reports the circularity ratio, how much genuinely external cash entered per dollar of reported revenue, and which participant in the chain has the least room. Deterministic scenario model with stated assumptions, not live data and not advice.

    Circular Financing Loop Simulator
    Scenario model, not live data

    Set the terms of one financing cycle. The model traces the money around the loop and reports how much of it was ever external, and which participant runs out of room first.

    Circularity ratio

    38%

    of compute spend funded by the seller of the compute

    External cash per dollar

    $0.62

    genuinely new money behind each headline dollar

    Lessor debt service cover

    1.70x

    $30.7bn revenue against $18.1bn obligations

    Revenue headroom

    41%

    fall in revenue the lessor absorbs before it cannot pay

    Break order, weakest link first
    1
    Compute lessor38 buffer
    Debt secured on depreciating hardware
    2
    End customer55 buffer
    Willingness to renew at contract price
    3
    Chip vendor67 buffer
    Revenue quality net of its own funding
    4
    Model laboratory70 buffer
    Funded by capital, not by cash flow

    Loop is self supporting. External cash dominates and the lessor covers obligations with room to spare.

    Fixed assumptions, stated so they can be argued with: 75 per cent of third party capital becomes compute spend, hardware debt costs 8 per cent blended, hardware depreciates over four years, and capacity revenue runs at 42 per cent of hardware cost annually at full utilisation. Outputs are arithmetic consequences of the inputs above. This is an illustrative structural model and not investment advice.

    Read the accompanying analysis: What Circular Financing Actually Is, and When It Becomes a Problem

    Related: The Neocloud Balance Sheet: Who Owes What to Whom and Is the AI Buildout a Bubble? Five Structural Tests