Another trend involves nascent aggregation models; ­specialist capital-light platforms are experimenting with matching fragmented supply to niche demand. While the key player in this trend is Nvidia’s DGX Cloud Lepton (see below), ­capital-light providers like Vast.ai and Together.AI are also beginning to aggregate fragmented supply for smaller buyers. They seek to match the centralised demand to fragmented non-committed supply in the form of a mar­ket for GPUs. One example is the Compute Exchange, which functions as an on-demand marketplace for GPU compute. In their submission to the European Commis­sion´s call for evidence for an impact assessment on ´AI Continent – new cloud and AI development act´, they ­noted that their platform would solve the‘cost, capacity and concentration challenges that EU innovators face in the current inefficient compute market.’ 17 In summary, there is an emerging set of actors that posi­tion themselves as alternatives to the existing hyperscalers and as partners to the EU´s sovereignty push. Some of these European providers offer much more competitive prices than the legacy behemoths, providing leaner com­pute stacks without a bundle of extraneous software, with low latency in inference being highlighted as an additional competitive advantage(Dahlstroem& Stephens 2025). While not the core focus of this study, telecommunications operators, such as Telenor in Norway 18 and Deutsche Tele­kom in Germany(Kaesebier, Rugamer& Marchandon 2025) are also pursuing exposure to the AI cloud market(Shrivas­tava et al. 2025), with a role in some of the leaked Gigafac ­tory bids(Serrano 2025). These actors are also politically active stakeholders, as shown in the responses to the call for evidence for on the upcoming EU Cloud and AI Devel­opment Act(CAIDA). 17  Compute Exchange submission to the call for evidence on an impact assessment on AI continent – new cloud and AI development act, 1.7.2025(reference F3571381), https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14628-AI-Continent-new-cloud-and-AI-development-act/F3571381_en. 18  https://www.telenoraifactory.no/(last accessed on 23 April 2026). 18 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung e.V.