The Economist 2026-04-29-1
AI is confronting a supply-chain crunch
Hyperscaler capex grew 190% from 2024 to 2026; their hardware suppliers grew 45%. That gap is why every throttling notice, plan change, and Sora shutdown traces back to the same constraint. The less-discussed dimension: agentic systems need 1 CPU per GPU versus 1:12 for chatbots, which is why Intel has doubled in six months and why every agent platform deck needs a CPU supply slide.