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Every AI conversation seems to start and end with NVIDIA. But the chips grabbing the headlines have to run somewhere, and that somewhere is a fast-growing layer of the market that most investors overlook: the physical infrastructure of AI.

Training and inference workloads are pushing power, cooling, and data center capacity to their limits. Billions of dollars are now flowing into power systems, thermal management, modular data centers, edge deployments, and the compute infrastructure that ties it all together. Analysts increasingly frame this as the “picks and shovels” side of AI, the companies supplying the tools rather than mining the gold.

That spending is not landing in one place. It is spreading across multiple layers of the infrastructure stack, from the largest power and cooling suppliers down to emerging players building modular systems designed to deploy capacity faster and closer to where it is needed.

Here is how four public companies, each attacking a different part of that opportunity, are positioning for the next phase of data center growth.

Aether Holdings (NASDAQ: ATHR)

Aether Holdings put itself squarely inside this trend on Monday, announcing its entry into AI infrastructure with the launch of Aether Compute, a new business initiative focused on modular data center solutions.

The centerpiece is the AetherPod™ VG100, Aether’s first modular, deployment-ready data center unit. Developed in partnership with Virtual Grid Inc., the VG100 brings together the core building blocks of an AI-ready facility—compute-ready racks, power distribution, cooling, monitoring, and infrastructure management—into a single modular platform designed to be deployed and scaled across distributed environments.

The strategy runs deeper than a product launch. Through its long-term partnership with Virtual Grid, Aether secured exclusive licensing and distribution rights across Southeast Asian markets, while retaining the ability to pursue commercial opportunities in the United States. The company also made a minority equity investment in Virtual Grid, aligning both sides around joint product development, commercialization, and go-to-market execution.

What makes the announcement notable is that it expands Aether beyond AI-powered investor intelligence and digital media into modular AI infrastructure, one of the fastest-growing areas supporting compute-intensive workloads. For Aether, Aether Compute establishes a new business line and a foundation to pursue future commercial opportunities across Southeast Asia and the United States.

Vertiv Holdings (NYSE: VRT)

Vertiv illustrates how AI demand has expanded beyond chips into the supporting infrastructure required to power high-density computing environments. The company supplies the power management, thermal management, and monitoring systems that dense GPU clusters depend on, and it has become one of the clearest beneficiaries of the data center buildout.

In its first quarter of 2026, Vertiv reported net sales of roughly $2.65 billion, up about 30% year over year, and raised its full-year outlook on the strength of AI-driven demand. Management has pointed to a project backlog above $15 billion and has been expanding aggressively into liquid cooling, the technology increasingly required to handle high-density AI racks.

Vertiv is the large-cap anchor of this group, and its momentum underscores exactly why the market Aether is stepping into is so attractive.

Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD)

Applied Digital approaches the opportunity from a different angle. Rather than selling infrastructure, it builds and operates the facilities where AI workloads actually run.

The company is developing a series of large AI data center campuses, including its Polaris Forge and Delta Forge sites, and has signed long-term leases with major customers, among them a multi-building agreement with CoreWeave covering hundreds of megawatts of capacity. Recent quarterly revenue climbed sharply year over year as contracted capacity began coming online.

Applied Digital represents the operator model, developing and operating AI-focused data center campuses and leasing capacity to customers rather than selling hardware. It is a different business than Aether’s, but it is driven by the same secular trend.

Digi Power X (NASDAQ: DGXX)

Digi Power X targets one of the biggest bottlenecks in the entire equation: how quickly capacity can actually be deployed. The company builds modular, AI-ready data center systems through its ARMS platform, standardized Tier III pods engineered for high-density GPU clusters, liquid cooling, and rapid multi-megawatt scaling.

As it shifts from digital asset mining toward power-backed AI infrastructure, Digi Power X pairs secured power capacity with modular design meant to convert powered sites into operating data centers far faster than conventional construction. It has also rolled out a GPU-as-a-Service platform to monetize that compute directly.

Digi Power X reinforces a key point: modular deployment is becoming its own competitive battleground, and AI infrastructure is maturing into a full ecosystem rather than a race to build one more traditional data center.

Four companies, four layers of the same trend

The takeaway is not that these companies compete head to head. It is that each occupies a different rung of the same expanding stack:

• ATHR, modular AI infrastructure and regional commercialization

• VRT, critical power and cooling at scale

• APLD, AI data center development and operations

• DGXX, modular deployment and power architecture

While these companies address different parts of the AI infrastructure ecosystem, they reflect the same underlying trend: demand for computing capacity is expanding investment well beyond semiconductors. For Aether Holdings, the launch of Aether Compute marks an early step into that market, giving investors another emerging company to watch as AI infrastructure continues to evolve.

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