The real money in the AI build-out is being made where physical capacity can't keep pace with capital, argues Subho Moulik, Founder & CEO at Appreciate. His test for investors: does a company own a constraint that money cannot quickly relieve? Software can be scaled in an afternoon, but a power transformer carries a 128-week lead time, and EUV lithography has just one supplier worldwide.

For the past two years, funding the artificial intelligence boom has often felt like a race where the main constraint was the size of the checkbook. But as the industry moves from…

Startups that make chips and related hardware smell cash in the air. Venture capitalists are more eager than they’ve been in years to fund these capital-intensive businesses,…