DeepSeek, the Chinese Stack and the Ten-Year Cloud-to-Edge Trajectory — N72 Complimentary Research Paper 264S

Independent N72 research paper on the DeepSeek inflection, the Chinese AI stack, and the ten-year Cloud-to-Edge trajectory for institutional investors and directors.

A six-page N72 Research Paper by Nicolas Chantier, founder of N72 and independent semiconductor analyst, published 28 April 2026 in the days following his La Tribune interview on the DeepSeek V4 release and Jensen Huang's "horrible outcome" warning.

The paper sets out how three events now meet in time: a Chinese model layer released at frontier quality under open weights, a complete Huawei Ascend / CANN / MindSpore stack mature enough to operate outside the Nvidia / CUDA perimeter, and the largest intergenerational rotation of US retirement capital in history.

Inside:

• The balance-sheet arithmetic — why AI data-centre assets booked on six-year schedules have an economic useful life closer to three.

• The renewal treadmill — why capex compounds rather than disappears, and which operators can absorb the compression.

• The 2027–2030 collision — baby-boomer RMDs, silicon renewal, and the impairment cycle cresting together on US mega-cap technology.

• A four-phase rotation map through 2035 and a regional framework covering the United States, China, Europe, the Gulf, India and Africa.

TLP:CLEAR — quotation authorised with attribution. Complimentary download.

For the full quantitative case — AI Factory Unit framework, per-AFU revenue viability threshold, sector-wide phantom profit, and cumulative impairment scenarios through 2030 — see the Thematic Insight "The Depreciation Reckoning of AI Infrastructure" 

(27-page brief + 60–90 min analyst call, €1,450).

N72 S.A.S. — independent research, 32 avenue Kléber, Paris.