1. Bernstein's Q2 2026 report on hyperscale cloud vendors clearly points out that the core bottleneck in cloud computing power supply has shifted. GPU hardware availability is no longer the primary limiting factor; the physical capacity of data centers—completely constructed, powered on, and ready to handle business workloads—is the current hard constraint.
2. Even if cloud vendors can acquire sufficient GPU server hardware, without adequate power supply, cooling, and network infrastructure in the data center, the hardware remains idle and cannot be converted into effective computing power for external delivery. Power acquisition, data center construction progress, and data center power-on efficiency have thus become core competitive factors in the industry.
3. Faced with this hard constraint, leading cloud vendors generally purchase ready-to-use computing power from third parties as a supplementary supply to meet surging customer demand. Purchasing third-party computing power directly suppresses the gross profit margins of cloud vendors themselves. Energy consumption indicators and power infrastructure have become prerequisites for AI computing power expansion, and the effectiveness of capital expenditure is directly constrained by the pace of data center power-on. (Bernstein Report, September 22)
