---
title: "Hello, Claude? Are You There?"
description: "The AI infrastructure shortage isn't chips anymore — it's power, data centers \u0026 memory. What happens when demand exceeds supply through 2028?"
categories: ["AI","infrastructure","market analysis"]
date: 2026-03-13
lastmod: 2026-07-27
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/what-if-we-run-out-of-capacity/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---


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<div class="capacity-timeline">

<div class="timeline-item">
<div class="timeline-date">Feb 2025</div>
<div class="timeline-quote">"We've been growing a lot and are out of GPUs."</div>
<div class="timeline-speaker">Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO <sup><a href="#fn1" style="color: #888; text-decoration: none;">1</a></sup></div>
</div>

<div class="timeline-item">
<div class="timeline-date">Mar 2025</div>
<div class="timeline-quote">"We are still waving off customers or scheduling them out into the future. This is a situation that we have not seen in our history."</div>
<div class="timeline-speaker">Safra Catz, Oracle CEO <sup><a href="#fn2" style="color: #888; text-decoration: none;">2</a></sup></div>
</div>

<div class="timeline-item">
<div class="timeline-date">Oct 2025</div>
<div class="timeline-quote">"You may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can't plug in. I don't have warm shells to plug into."</div>
<div class="timeline-speaker">Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO <sup><a href="#fn3" style="color: #888; text-decoration: none;">3</a></sup></div>
</div>

<div class="timeline-item">
<div class="timeline-date">Feb 2026</div>
<div class="timeline-quote">"What keeps us up at night… The top question is definitely around capacity. All constraints — be it power, land, supply chain constraints — how do you ramp up to meet this extraordinary demand?"</div>
<div class="timeline-speaker">Sundar Pichai, Alphabet CEO <sup><a href="#fn4" style="color: #888; text-decoration: none;">4</a></sup></div>
</div>

<div class="timeline-item">
<div class="timeline-date">Feb 2026</div>
<div class="timeline-quote">"There's no relief as far as I know. No relief until 2028."</div>
<div class="timeline-speaker">Lip-Bu Tan, Intel CEO <sup><a href="#fn5" style="color: #888; text-decoration: none;">5</a></sup></div>
</div>

</div>

What happens when your AI doesn't answer?

Everything is in short supply. It's no longer just GPUs. It's power. Data centers. Memory. CPUs.

If there's no relief for six more quarters, perhaps it's time to plan for a world where inference isn't freely available on-demand.

Inference prices, which have been static, will rise. Subsidies will be harder to justify.

Enterprises will need to rationalize workloads, deciding which teams receive state-of-the-art models & which don't. Not every CRM update requires a trillion-parameter frontier model.

Inference rationing normalizes. Marketing receives this much, sales receives that much, software engineers probably receive a lot more.

Constraint will be the mother of invention. Companies will optimize what they have, adopt open source where they can, and likely move to smaller models for many workloads.

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<span style="color: #888;">$</span> <span style="color: #fff;">Hello, Claude. Are you there?</span><br><br>
<span id="spinner"></span> Waiting until 2028...
</div>

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<div style="margin-top: 3rem; padding-top: 1rem; border-top: 1px solid #eee; font-size: 0.85rem; color: #666;">
<p id="fn1"><sup>1</sup> <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/27/openai-ceo-sam-altman-says-the-company-is-out-of-gpus/">TechCrunch, February 2025</a></p>
<p id="fn2"><sup>2</sup> <a href="https://www.ciodive.com/news/oracle-cloud-data-center-capital-spend-capacity-crunch/750606/">CIO Dive, March 2025</a></p>
<p id="fn3"><sup>3</sup> <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-ceo-says-the-company-doesnt-have-enough-electricity-to-install-all-the-ai-gpus-in-its-inventory-you-may-actually-have-a-bunch-of-chips-sitting-in-inventory-that-i-cant-plug-in">Tom's Hardware, October 2025</a></p>
<p id="fn4"><sup>4</sup> <a href="https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/26/02/50401232/alphabet-ceo-sundar-pichai-says-ai-capacity-is-what-keeps-us-up-at-night-as-power-land-and-supply-chain-limits-test-growth">Benzinga, February 2026</a></p>
<p id="fn5"><sup>5</sup> <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/intel-ceo-says-there-s-no-relief-on-memory-shortage-until-2028">Bloomberg, February 2026</a></p>
</div>