The Beginning of Scarcity in AI: Half of US Data Center Builds Delayed or Canceled

Tomasz Tunguz·high signal

Tom Tunguz's analysis (183 HN points) argues AI is entering a scarcity phase, as Anthropic limits Mythos to ~40 organizations and compute requirements double every 3-4 months. Tom's Hardware reports that of ~140 large-scale US data center projects (12GW), only a third are under construction — the rest are stuck due to transformer and switchgear lead times stretching to 5 years. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft plan to spend $650B in 2026 on AI capacity that the power grid cannot yet support.