Watts in Store for 2027 : The AI Ceiling

The piece argues that energized compute will hit a ceiling of roughly 80GW in 2027 even as GPU hourly rental rates have doubled in six months, from $3 to $12–13, pushing Anthropic's blended GPU-hour cost up 82% in two quarters, with finished server racks sitting unpowered in staging warehouses. It estimates today's 38GW fleet earns about $140b and that 43GW added in 2027 on 3–5x more powerful chips could deliver roughly $350b annualized, for nearly $500b total, and lists consequences including pressure to shift GPU hours from training to inference, latency-based pricing, algorithmic innovation, harness efficiency, and a reality check for vibe-coding economics.