Citadel: Compute Scarcity Remains AI's Biggest Bottleneck, Hyperscale Cloud Providers May Be the Ultimate Winners

Citadel Securities' latest analysis reveals the logic of AI competition: the deciding factor is not model capability, but "powered-on, readily available compute." Grid access and approval cycles often take years, leaving the compute gap unresolved in the short term; the rise of AI agents further multiplies compute consumption per task, with demand continuously outpacing supply. Whoever controls physical compute infrastructure reaps the dual dividends of frontier models and low-cost execution layers—hyperscale cloud providers may be the most certain winners in this arms race in terms of risk-reward ratio.