AI Shortage Quote Tracker

“We're going up that kind of vertical wall of demand right now and there's just not enough tokens available.”

Sarah Friar · CFO

The bottleneck of the AI era is compute supply, not demand. Friar said: “If you want to buy more compute in 2026, good luck — I don't know where you'd get it,” expecting scarcity through 2026 and a still-limited 2027. The bottleneck is not a single GPU but everything — power, land, power infrastructure, regulation, racks, chip supply chain, memory, talent, and community trust — with a memory-demand surge already underway. A 1GW data center costs ~$50B fully loaded and takes ~3 years, so even the Michigan site won't deliver until late 2027/early 2028. Per-gigawatt compute cost is rising as power and memory get more expensive. A $122B raise closed in March 2026 secured ‘maximum optionality’; compute grew 0.2GW (2023)→1.9GW (2025) while OpenAI diversified beyond NVIDIA/Azure to AMD, Cerebras, a custom Broadcom design, and Oracle/CoreWeave/GCP/AWS. Where she feels shortest on compute now is 2030–2032.

“Demand continues to exceed supply, with memory as the primary constraint.”

Jeff Clarke · Vice Chairman and COO

Dell posted $16.1B of AI server revenue in Q1 FY2027 (+757% YoY) and exited the quarter with a $51.3B AI backlog. COO Jeff Clarke stressed the bottleneck is memory (DRAM and NAND), not GPUs. The company is supply-constrained in the second half and framed it explicitly as a supply, not demand, problem — defending margins through cost control amid surging memory prices.

“My sense is that we will be supply constrained throughout the entire life of Vera Rubin.”

Jensen Huang · Founder & CEO

Demand for the next-gen Vera Rubin platform outpaces capacity from the start of shipments. Said in response to a question from Vivek Arya.

“Fast forward to today, that number jumped 7x to over 3.2 quadrillion per month.”

Sundar Pichai · CEO

Demand-side signal — monthly token volume jumped 7x, from 9.7T two years ago to 480T last year to over 3.2 quadrillion now. Many companies have blown through their annual token budgets, and it's only May.

“We remain largely sold out of our 2026 capacity with prices increasing across the board from Ampere to Hopper to Blackwell.”

Nitin Agrawal · CFO

Largely sold out of 2026 capacity, with prices rising across Ampere, Hopper and Blackwell. Revenue backlog $99.4B (~4x YoY).

“As we approach production, demand for MI450 series GPUs continues to strengthen, with lead customer forecasts now exceeding our initial plans and a growing number of new customers engaging on large-scale deployments, including additional multi-gigawatt opportunities.”

Lisa Su · Chair & CEO

MI450 / Helios rack-scale deployment demand now exceeds initial plans. Set against the Meta 6GW Instinct deployment and the OpenAI partnership.

“Our demand fulfillment rate is now at a record low, and unlike previous years, customers who are concerned about supply shortages are actually bringing forward their demand for 2027.”

Jaejune Kim · EVP, Memory Global Sales & Marketing

AI demand deepens the memory shortfall as HBM4 enters mass production; fulfillment rate at a record low. The English quote is a media rendering of the Korean-language call.

“We provide supply; they provide demand. We have visibility for many years, all the way to five years.”

Luis Felipe Visoso · EVP & CFO

Shifts to a new business model backed by multi-year (up to 5-year) customer commitments. Five partnerships, $42B committed, with over a third of FY2027 bits pre-committed; revenue +97% QoQ.

“The cost of components, particularly memory, has skyrocketed. We are in a stage where there is just not enough capacity for the amount of demand.”

Andy Jassy · CEO

On the Q1 2026 call, CEO Andy Jassy said component costs — memory in particular — had skyrocketed and that there simply isn't enough capacity for the demand. AWS AI revenue topped $15B in the quarter but could have grown faster absent capacity constraints. In-house Trainium2 is essentially sold out and Trainium3 nearly fully subscribed. AWS added 3.9GW of power in 2025 and plans to double total power capacity by end of 2027.

“HBM demand required of the company over the next three years far exceeds our supply capacity.”

Kim Ki-tae · VP, Head of HBM Sales & Marketing

Three years of HBM demand exceeds supply — effectively three years sold out. The English quote is a media rendering of the Korean-language call.

“We expect to book 10 to 15 gigawatts of contracts in Q2 and to end 2026 with at least 110 gigawatts.”

Scott Strazik · CEO

Gas turbine lead times of about three years, with 2030 slots already selling and backlog up $13B in the quarter. (Original context: turbines are 'not the gating item' — 'supply constrained' is not a verbatim phrasing.)

“We don't leave any business on the table. We are working very hard to meet all our customers' demand.”

C.C. Wei · Chairman & CEO

Wei acknowledged advanced packaging (CoWoS) capacity is very tight. Said in response to a question about larger reticle sizes and competitive threats.

“We expect, in fact, that the supply will not meet the demand for the foreseeable future.”

Christophe Fouquet · CEO

Chip demand outpaces supply. Year-end 2025 backlog EUR 38.8B; Q4 bookings EUR 13.2B (~2x consensus). Memory systems revenue topped logic for the first time.

“We are now seeing NAND demand significantly in excess of our available supply for the foreseeable future.”

Sanjay Mehrotra · CEO

Both DRAM and NAND demand exceed supply. Management said it can fulfill only 50% to two-thirds of some key customers' demand in the medium term, and expects tightness to persist beyond calendar 2026.

“Leading-edge foundry/logic and DRAM capacity is essentially full and prices have increased.”

Brice Hill · CFO

Leading-edge logic and DRAM capacity essentially full with prices rising. AI HBM DRAM needs 3-4x more wafers per bit than standard DRAM. DRAM rose from 27% to 34% of Semiconductor Systems revenue.

“Legacy infrastructure was not designed for the performance, speed and security needs of AI.”

Chuck Robbins · Chair & CEO

Demand/architecture-shift remark — legacy infrastructure isn't built for AI and needs a rethink. A demand narrative rather than a strict shortage quote. (Patel's 'chatbot to agent' framing was at Cisco Live, not the call, so it is excluded.)

“We experienced another step function increase in our data center bookings with a book-to-bill ratio that exceeded 4x.”

James Anderson · CEO

Data center book-to-bill above 4x, with most of 2026 and much of 2027 already booked. Strong 800G and 1.6T transceiver demand; the imbalance is expected to persist next year. Distinct from the existing FY26 Q1 (InP laser) remark.

“Given the strength of the market, we were unable to fulfill demand for our customers this quarter.”

Luis Felipe Visoso · EVP & CFO

CFO formally states it could not fulfill demand — effectively sold out — and expects the next quarter to be even more undersupplied than Q2.

“We have completed agreements on price and volume for our entire calendar 2026 HBM supply, including Micron's industry-leading HBM4.”

Sanjay Mehrotra · CEO

Entire 2026 HBM volume and price pre-committed. Said it can meet only 50-67% of some key customers' demand in the medium term (across memory broadly). Distinct from the existing FY26 Q2 NAND remark.

“This robust growth was driven by AI semiconductor revenue of $6.5 billion, which was up 74% year on year.”

Hock Tan · President & CEO

Demand-side signal — AI semiconductor revenue surged 74%, guided to double to $8.2B next quarter, driven by custom AI accelerators and Ethernet switches.

“In the first quarter, demand for our NAND products continued to outpace our supply, a dynamic we expect to persist through the end of calendar year 2026 and beyond.”

David Goeckeler · CEO

Extends the undersupply outlook beyond 2027; allocation escalates from several products to all end markets, with customers pre-committing 2027 demand.

“Our data center growth in Q1 was constrained by the supply of indium phosphide lasers.”

James Anderson · CEO

Indium phosphide (InP) laser capacity — particularly EMLs — for optical transceivers capped data center revenue growth. Coherent is ramping a 6-inch line to expand internal InP capacity.

“Therefore, we now expect to be capacity constrained through at least the end of our fiscal year.”

Amy Hood · CFO

Azure demand far exceeds available capacity; expects to stay capacity constrained through the end of FY2026. Same diagnosis two quarters running.

“OCI consumption revenue was up 57% and demand continues to dramatically outstrip supply.”

Safra Catz · CEO

OCI consumption revenue +57% with demand far exceeding supply. RPO backlog up 359% to $455 billion.

“In our fiscal fourth quarter, we estimate that overall demand exceeded supply, which we anticipate to continue through calendar year 2026.”

David Goeckeler · CEO

First official 'demand exceeded supply' since the spin-off; allocation begins on several products at the same time.

“We have taken actions to reduce supply to match demand and commenced price increases this quarter.”

David Goeckeler · CEO

First independent earnings call after the spin-off from Western Digital. A turning point as it deliberately cut supply and began price increases, exiting NAND oversupply.