The AI Compute Crunch Is Here (and It's Affecting the Entire Economy)

VC-subsidized cheap AI inference is ending, and the knock-on effects are rippling across electricity prices, labor markets, and gadget supply chains. Lead with the mechanism: the same chips that train models compete with the chips that run consumer devices, and hyperscalers are winning the auction. For the reader who uses Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot daily, this is the structural reason prices are about to rise while capacity gets rationed.