The infrastructure gap will persist through 2027. GPU and memory shortages remain acute, while new data centers require four or more years to build amid power grid delays. The International Energy Agency and consulting firms forecast U.S. data center power demand will reach 100 gigawatts by 2030, a 165 percent increase, requiring $500 billion annually in capital expenditure. Pricing pressures and service restrictions have intensified since January, with major rationing announcements from Anthropic in March and OpenAI in April.
A Wall Street Journal investigation published April 12 exposed real-time service disruptions affecting enterprise customers as adoption accelerates. The compute shortage now poses a material risk to user growth and competition if pricing rises while infrastructure expansion lags. Attorneys advising AI vendors, cloud providers, or enterprise customers should monitor service level agreements, capacity commitments, and potential liability exposure as rationing becomes standard practice rather than temporary constraint.