AI Compute Shortage Drives Up Blackwell Rental Rates as Anthropic Loses Customers
Demand for generative AI is rising rapidly, but supplies of advanced GPUs, data-center power and cloud capacity have failed to keep pace, creating a computing bottleneck. Nvidia's latest Blackwell GPUs have become a fiercely contested resource. For model providers such as Anthropic, insufficient computing capacity is also directly affecting the speed and reliability of the Claude API, as well as the confidence of enterprise customers.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Blackwell GPU rental rates had risen 48% in two months, though it did not provide the start and end dates or the actual rental cost per GPU. Over the same period, Anthropic's Claude API reportedly suffered frequent outages and slow responses. Customers including enterprise software company Retool have shifted some demand to OpenAI because of the service instability.
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The history behind this eventNVIDIA GPU Supply Remains Tight as OpenAI, Anthropic and Other Giants Get Priority
Training and inference for generative AI models depend heavily on NVIDIA GPUs, but supplies of advanced chips and cloud computing capacity remain tight. Microsoft and Amazon are prioritizing large customers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, making computing resources harder to secure for AI startups with less funding and purchasing power while also driving up product development costs.
The latest report says small and midsize AI startups face waits of up to six months for GPU capacity, with some demand pushed back until the end of 2026. Rental prices have also risen significantly, although the report did not disclose exact figures. To overcome the bottleneck, some companies are purchasing their own hardware, while venture capital firms are planning shared computing pools to aggregate demand and strengthen their bargaining power.
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