Is the AI Compute Crunch Here?
March 9, 2026
In January I wrote about the coming AI compute crunch. Two months later, I think “coming” was the wrong word.
We’re starting to see serious signs that some providers are really struggling to meet demand. I still think this is a seriously underpriced risk which has major implications for how much adoption AI can have over the next year or two.
For all the talk of an AI bubble, which seems to have receded in the last few weeks anyway, what doesn’t seem to be factored in is just how much demand there really is for these tokens, this kind of “compute”.
Martin Alderson has been tracking how much computational capability there is and the demand for it and suggests that we’ve now hit a crunch that is being reflected in downtime for in particular Anthropic who are clearly undergoing meteoric increase in demand.
