Source: The Wall Street Journal
The jump from $2.75 to $4.08 per hour in just two months reveals a hard constraint: agentic AI workloads—systems that run continuously to complete tasks rather than responding to single queries—consume compute at rates the market hasn't priced for. Companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are rationing API access and degrading service tiers. Current infrastructure can't keep pace with actual demand, forcing the industry into a scarcity game that punishes smaller competitors and end users. The price mechanism is already signaling strain.