How the hyperscaler reinvestment burden is built

Methodology version 1.0. List date Oct 2, 2026.

Selection principle

The list is built on one core principle: a company is included for its economic exposure to inference demand, not for how it describes itself. Producing a token requires silicon to compute it, a facility to house that silicon, power to run both, and a model to serve it. A company qualifies when it earns revenue at one of those four stages.

Selection therefore turns on whether a company’s earnings are levered to aggregate token consumption — not on its sector classification or its use of the word “AI”. As more of society’s cognitive work is performed by machines, more of what that work costs accrues to these firms, and the index measures that transfer. A company whose results do not turn on how many tokens the world consumes is excluded, whatever it calls itself.

This criterion is applied by our editors as a matter of judgement, not by a quantitative screen, and it is the single discretionary input the series rests on. Every rule below governs computation only; none of them determines membership.

This index

100 × capital expenditure ÷ operating cash flow, for Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle.

Every index

A company whose ticker carried another business before it counts only from its own first day: Nebius from 21 October 2024, when it began trading as Nebius Group in place of Yandex.
Each index is computed from the financial statements of the public companies in the AI 100, or the part of it named below, on the list in force at each quarter end. Private constituents are excluded: their statements are not public.
Figures are aggregates: each item is summed across the companies before the ratio is taken, so a company counts in proportion to its size. Flows are the trailing twelve months; balance-sheet items are at the period end. Amounts reported in another currency are converted to US dollars at the rate stated with each filing.
Each point is a calendar quarter end. A quarter is published once companies with the figures on file represent at least 80% of the basket's market capitalisation, so the newest quarter appears after the larger companies have reported. A newly listed company joins an index that needs a year's flows once a year of its results has been filed. A listed company with no statements on file is shown as missing; with no figures to weigh it by, it does not hold a quarter back.
Figures are the latest as filed, including restatements: a restated quarter is recomputed. Values before the list date apply the list selected on that date backwards and are hypothetical.

Changes

Oct 2, 2026AddedFluence Energy
Oct 2, 2026AddedSkydio, from Oct 2, 2026
Oct 2, 2026AddedCentrus Energy
Oct 2, 2026AddedNuScale Power
Oct 2, 2026AddedLightmatter, from Oct 2, 2026
Oct 2, 2026AddedRunway, from Oct 2, 2026
Oct 2, 2026AddedApplied Digital
Oct 2, 2026AddedGlobus Medical
Oct 2, 2026AddedCognex
Oct 2, 2026AddedSambaNova, from Oct 2, 2026
Oct 2, 2026AddedLambda, from Oct 2, 2026
Oct 2, 2026AddedBWX Technologies
Oct 2, 2026AddedGenerac
Oct 2, 2026

Sources: company filings and exchange prices.