Key Highlights

● TeraWulf signed a 20-year Lease with Anthropic on July 6, 2026 for roughly 401 MW of capacity at its Kentucky data campus, valued at about $19 billion over the initial term and up to roughly $33 billion with extensions.

● CrowdStrike's fiscal second quarter Revenue reached $1.47 billion, up 26% year over year, with ending annual Recurring Revenue of $5.84 billion, up 25%, and a Q2 record $377.4 million in free cash flow.

● IREN reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $137.2 million and AI Cloud revenue of $70.5 million, alongside a net loss of about $684 million that included roughly $450.4 million of non-cash impairments, while continuing to build out its $9.7 billion AI cloud agreement with Microsoft.

● JFrog's cloud revenue grew 53% to $87.5 million and now represents 53% of total revenue, with net dollar retention improving to 121% and customers with more than $1 million in annual recurring revenue reaching 97.

Five very different Nasdaq names, a Cybersecurity platform, two power-hungry data-center operators reborn from bitcoin mining, a DevOps software maker and an ad-tech specialist, show how AI now means completely different things inside the same index.

The Same Index, Five Very Different AI Trades

The Nasdaq Composite spent much of 2026 being described in shorthand as the AI index. But the label hides how uneven the trade has become. Under one roof sit software companies selling AI features on top of recurring subscriptions, and infrastructure companies signing multi-billion-dollar leases to house other people's models.

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF), JFrog (NASDAQ: FROG), IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) and PubMatic (NASDAQ: PUBM) map that spread almost perfectly. Two of them, TeraWulf and IREN, are not software businesses at all; they are compute-and-power landlords that pivoted from mining bitcoin to hosting AI. The other three sell code, security and Advertising infrastructure. Watching all five together in September 2026 is a useful way to separate genuine AI Economics from the Marketing gloss.

A Sector Splitting Into Software Margins and Infrastructure Capex

By late August 2026, the market's enthusiasm was still heavily concentrated in anything touching AI compute, with reporting through the month pointing to fresh record highs for the Nasdaq Composite and continued strength across chips and hyperscale-linked names.

That backdrop rewards two very different profiles. Software platforms like CrowdStrike, JFrog and PubMatic are judged on recurring revenue, retention and free cash flow, capital-light models where AI is a feature that deepens moats. Infrastructure names like TeraWulf and IREN are judged on contracted megawatts, financing costs and construction timelines, capital-intensive models where AI is a tenant.

The following company sections separate what is confirmed fact, reported results and signed contracts, from analysis and forward-looking forecasts, which are inherently uncertain.

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD): A Cybersecurity Platform Compounding Through the AI Era

CrowdStrike Holdings remains the clearest quality-software story in this group. For its second quarter of fiscal 2027, ended July 31, 2026 and reported on August 26, 2026, the company posted total revenue of $1.47 billion, up 26% year over year, with subscription revenue of $1.40 billion.

Ending annual recurring revenue reached $5.84 billion, up 25%, and the company reported record net new ARR of $332.8 million. Non-GAAP Net Income was $322.9 million, or $0.31 per diluted share, while GAAP net income was a slim $0.01 per share. Free Cash Flow of $377.4 million was a Q2 record.

Management raised full-year fiscal 2027 guidance to revenue of roughly $5.99 billion to $6.01 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $1.25 to $1.26.

The gap between tiny GAAP profit and large non-GAAP profit is worth remembering: stock-based compensation is heavy. But the durability of net new ARR, more than a year after the July 2024 outage that once threatened its reputation, suggests the platform sale, identity, cloud, next-gen SIEM and AI-driven detection, is intact. What to watch: whether ARR growth stabilizes above the mid-20s and whether Falcon Flex adoption keeps pull-through healthy.

TeraWulf (NASDAQ:WULF): A Bitcoin Miner Now Underwriting AI With a Landmark Anthropic Lease

TeraWulf is the first infrastructure outlier here, and it should be framed honestly: this is not a software company but a power and data-center operator that grew out of Bitcoin Mining and is now leasing capacity to AI tenants.

The defining event came on July 6, 2026, when Anthropic signed a 20-year lease at TeraWulf's Justified Data Campus in Kentucky for roughly 401 MW of capacity, valued at about $19 billion over the initial term and up to roughly $33 billion with extensions, with initial delivery targeted for the second half of 2027.

For the second quarter of 2026, reported August 5, 2026, TeraWulf recorded revenue of $44.8 million, with HPC lease revenue of $31.9 million now 71% of the total, and a reported net loss of $940.8 million alongside adjusted EBITDA of $(18.3) million.

The huge reported net loss dwarfs revenue and should not automatically be read as operating cash burn; such figures at pivoting miners are typically dominated by non-cash items, though the specific drivers merit confirmation in the filing. The bull case rests on converting signed leases into delivered megawatts on schedule. What to watch: construction milestones at Lake Mariner and Kentucky, and financing costs.

JFrog (NASDAQ:FROG): DevOps Software Riding a Cloud and Security Upgrade Cycle

JFrog sells the software-supply-chain and DevOps platform that many engineering teams use to store, secure and ship code, increasingly relevant as AI-generated software multiplies artifacts and vulnerabilities.

In the second quarter of 2026, reported August 6, 2026, JFrog delivered revenue of $163.8 million, up 29% year over year, with cloud revenue of $87.5 million growing 53% and now representing 53% of the total.

Profitability was mixed by measure: a GAAP operating loss of $(13.2) million and GAAP net loss per share of $(0.03), against non-GAAP Operating Income of $32.6 million and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.27. Free cash flow was $53.7 million. Net dollar retention improved to 121%, customers with more than $100,000 in ARR rose to 1,291, and those above $1 million reached 97.

Management guided full-year 2026 revenue to $648 million to $652 million and non-GAAP EPS of $0.96 to $1.00. The cloud mix shift is the key story: it lifts long-term margins but pressures near-term GAAP profitability. Security attach and AI and MLOps workflows are the growth levers investors are underwriting. What to watch: whether cloud can keep compounding above 40% and whether the $1 million-plus cohort keeps expanding.

IREN (NASDAQ:IREN): From Iris Energy to AI Cloud, With Impairments Along the Way

IREN Limited, formerly Iris Energy, is the second infrastructure outlier, another bitcoin-mining heritage Business rebuilding itself around AI cloud and data-center capacity. It should be judged as a capital-intensive infrastructure play, not a software name.

For fiscal fourth-quarter 2026, ended June 30, 2026 and covered on the late-August earnings call, the company reported total revenue of $137.2 million and AI Cloud revenue of $70.5 million, with AI-cloud annual recurring revenue described as around $1 billion operational. The quarter carried a net loss of about $684 million, including roughly $450.4 million of non-cash impairments and a $102.1 million fair-value decline on mining hardware.

The company's flagship contract remains the $9.7 billion AI cloud agreement with Microsoft, announced on November 3, 2025.

Management has framed aggressive multi-billion-dollar ARR ambitions for late 2026; those are forward targets and should be treated as forecasts, not results. What to watch: GPU delivery cadence for Microsoft, financing terms, and how quickly AI cloud revenue overtakes legacy mining.

PubMatic (NASDAQ:PUBM): Ad-Tech Betting on CTV, Mobile and an AI-Driven Buying Layer

PubMatic is the pure ad-tech name in the group, a Sell-Side platform helping publishers monetize digital inventory, now leaning into connected TV, mobile and AI-assisted media buying.

In the second quarter of 2026, reported August 6, 2026, PubMatic posted revenue of $78.6 million, up 11% year over year, with a small GAAP net loss of $(0.03) per share, non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.12 and adjusted EBITDA of $19.6 million, a 25% margin. It ended the quarter with $137.5 million in cash and marketable securities and no debt.

Growth skewed to newer formats: CTV revenue rose 13% year over year globally, and mobile app revenue grew more than 40%. The company continued repurchasing stock, buying 2.1 million shares in the quarter, and disclosed a CFO transition, with Steve Pantelick retiring after 15 years.

For the third quarter of 2026, PubMatic guided revenue of $75 million to $77 million and adjusted EBITDA of $17 million to $19 million. PubMatic is the smallest, most macro-sensitive name here; ad budgets swing with sentiment. Its debt-free Balance Sheet and Buybacks give flexibility, but double-digit growth must broaden beyond CTV and mobile to re-rate the stock. What to watch: the CFO handover and whether AI-driven tools lift take rates.

What Investors Should Watch

Three threads run through these five names into the fourth quarter of 2026.

First, the software trio, CrowdStrike, JFrog and PubMatic, will be judged on recurring revenue quality, net new ARR, retention and free cash flow, rather than headline AI narratives. GAAP-versus-non-GAAP gaps deserve scrutiny in all three.

Second, the infrastructure outliers, TeraWulf and IREN, live or die on execution: turning signed leases and contracts into delivered, revenue-generating megawatts, on time and at manageable financing cost. Their reported net losses, heavy with non-cash items, make cash flow and construction milestones the real scoreboard.

Third, concentration risk cuts both ways. TeraWulf and IREN each lean on a small number of very large counterparties, Anthropic and Microsoft, which is both a strength and a single point of failure.

Two Business Models Sharing One Ticker Tape

CrowdStrike, JFrog and PubMatic reported growing recurring revenue in their most recent quarters, while TeraWulf and IREN reported large net losses alongside landmark AI infrastructure contracts. That split is the real story of AI exposure on the Nasdaq today: capital-light software compounders sit beside capital-heavy compute landlords, with very different risk profiles attached to the same theme.

If AI Demand holds, the infrastructure names carry the most explosive upside and the most execution risk, while the software names offer steadier, margin-driven compounding. The scoreboard for TeraWulf and IREN will not be their income statements for some time yet; it will be whether contracted megawatts actually get built and switched on.