AI-driven compute crunch sends prices and investment soaring

Shortage grips the whole stack

A global compute shortage in 2026 has rippled across chips, clouds, servers and data‑centre components, pushing prices higher and forcing companies to scramble for capacity. It has been reported that GPUs, CPUs, HBM memory, optical modules, high‑speed switches and even power and liquid‑cooling capacity are all in short supply. The result: a seller’s market for compute and a rare, broad‑based revaluation of firms across the AI supply chain.

Demand: Agents and the rise of Token economics

The immediate cause is exploding demand from so‑called Agents — AI systems that break work into many model calls and continuous tool invocations. IDC reportedly forecasts active Agents will grow from 28.6 million in 2025 to 2.216 billion by 2030. In China, the National Data Bureau data show average daily Token calls recently topped about 140 trillion, up roughly 1,400x from early 2024. Cloud executives — including Alibaba (阿里巴巴)’s management, it has been reported — say there are no idle GPU cards in their fleets. Who buys the extra capacity when every query now burns Tokens in real time?

Supply constraints, capex and geopolitics

Supply cannot be scaled overnight: semiconductor fabrication, HBM production and data‑centre construction are capital‑intensive and long‑lead. Major suppliers such as SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron for HBM, and Nvidia, Intel and AMD for processors, face capacity limits. It has been reported that export controls and trade policy frictions are compounding the problem by complicating the global flows of advanced chips, making capacity expansion more geopolitically fraught. Gartner and other researchers put global data‑centre investment at roughly $505.6 billion in 2025 and forecast about $788 billion in 2026; meanwhile Chinese tech groups — including Alibaba (阿里巴巴), ByteDance (字节跳动), Baidu (百度), Tencent (腾讯), China Mobile (中国移动), China Unicom (中国联通) and China Telecom (中国电信) — and U.S. cloud giants are ramping capital expenditure sharply. Industry insiders say shortages and price pressure are likely to persist for at least one to two years.