AI industry executives stated this week that demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure remains exceptionally strong, countering concerns triggered by recent chip stock volatility. Pat Gelsinger, former Intel CEO and now general partner at Playground Global, told CNBC on Wednesday that he thinks of AI demand as 'almost unlimited,' with energy availability as the only real limiter. The statements came as chip stocks experienced renewed volatility following Meta's announcement that it will sell excess AI computing capacity and Samsung's profit forecast that caused its stock to fall despite a more than 360% rally over the last 12 months.
Executives Report AI Demand Exceeds Supply Capacity
Pat Gelsinger told CNBC on Wednesday that he somewhat thinks of AI demand as almost unlimited. "Because how much economic value do you get for increased intelligence? Almost infinite across every industry imaginable," Gelsinger added.
Marc Boroditsky, chief revenue officer at Nebius, told CNBC on Thursday that what the company is experiencing in terms of demand is extraordinary. "There's much more demand than we're able to fulfil, and that's been our experience for some time now," Boroditsky said. Nebius is building data centers using Nvidia's GPUs.
Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems, told CNBC on Wednesday that for the industry as a whole, the demand for compute far outstrips available capacity. "I think we're short on data centers. I think we're short on, as an industry, many of the inputs to compute," Feldman said.
Data Center and Chip Players Report Supply Constraints
Sungyun Park, CEO of Rebellions, told CNBC on Wednesday that AI infrastructure momentum is still huge. "I personally believe it's not the signal saying that ... all the hyperscalers [are overinvesting] in the infrastructure," Park added in reference to the Meta and xAI news. Rebellions is a chip startup from South Korea backed by Samsung and SK Hynix.
Michael Hurlston, CEO of Lumentum, told CNBC on Wednesday that the company's products are sold out for the next five years. "We're trying to build up our capacity as much as we possibly can to fulfil a demand that we see out five years at this point," Hurlston said. Lumentum sells photonics and optical products for connectivity in the data center. Lumentum's stock is up around 600% over the last 12 months.
Andrew Feldman said the example of Meta and xAI selling its excess capacity is a "unique" case. Cerebras went public earlier this year and is one of a slew of semiconductor startups attempting to become major players in the data center market and challenge Nvidia.
Enterprise Spending Shifts from Tokenmaxxing to Valuemaxxing
Nebius' Marc Boroditsky said that tokenmaxxing is only worthwhile if an organization is seeing a return on investment as a result. "The CFO bringing the hammer down and slowing spend should actually be looking for value or valuemaxxing," Boroditsky said, adding that AI should be applied to create value that justifies the spending.
"We're seeing a shift now to more rationalization. We've seen it with every tech cycle, and that rationalization will definitely continue the demand," Nebius' Boroditsky said.
Cerebras' Andrew Feldman said that in the future, certain models will be used in specific situations. "I think it's probably the case that you don't need a giant bus to go to the grocery store," Feldman said. "Certain workloads migrate to some type of compute and easier workloads to others, and I think as we learn and become more sophisticated in our deployment of AI, the same thing will happen."
FAQ
What did AI executives say about demand this week?
AI executives including Pat Gelsinger, Marc Boroditsky, Andrew Feldman, Sungyun Park, and Michael Hurlston told CNBC this week that demand for AI infrastructure remains exceptionally strong and exceeds current supply capacity, despite recent chip stock volatility.
Why did Samsung's stock fall despite a profit forecast?
Samsung forecast a gigantic rise in profit this week, but its stock fell after a more than 360% rally over the last 12 months, with the market questioning how much further it could go.
What is the shift from tokenmaxxing to valuemaxxing?
Enterprises are shifting from tokenmaxxing—encouraging employees to use as much AI as possible regardless of results—to valuemaxxing, which focuses on return on investment and applying AI to create value that justifies the spending, according to Nebius' Marc Boroditsky.
