Microsoft CEO says the company doesn't have enough electricity to install all the AI GPUs in its inventory - 'you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in' | Tom's Hardware
Microsoft CEO says the company doesn't have enough electricity to install all the AI GPUs in its inventory - 'you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in'
By Jowi Morales published 2 November 2025
‘I don’t have warm shells to plug into’
(Image credit: Bg2 Pod / YouTube)
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during an interview alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that the problem in the AI industry is not an excess supply of compute, but rather a lack of power to accommodate all those GPUs. In fact, Nadella said that the company currently has a problem of not having enough power to plug in some of the AI GPUs the firm has in inventory. He said this on YouTube in response to Brad Gerstner, the host of Bg2 Pod, when asked whether Nadella and Altman agreed with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who said there is no chance of a compute glut in the next two to three years.
“I think the cycles of demand and supply in this particular case, you can’t really predict, right? The point is: what’s the secular trend? The secular trend is what Sam (OpenAI CEO) said, which is, at the end of the day, because quite frankly, the biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it’s power — it’s sort of the ability to get the builds done fast enough close to power ,” Satya said in the podcast. “S o, if you can’t do that, you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in. In fact, that is my problem today. It’s not a supply issue of chips; it’s actually the fact that I don’t have warm shells to plug into. ” [Emphasis added]
Nadella's mention of 'shells' refers to a data center shell, which is effectively an empty building with all of the necessary ingredients, such as power and water, needed to immediately begin production.
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AI’s power consumption has been a topic many experts have discussed since last year. This came to the forefront as soon as Nvidia fixed the GPU shortage, and many tech companies are now investing in research in small modular nuclear reactors to help scale their power sources as they build increasingly large data centers.
All things AI w @altcap @sama & @satyanadella. A Halloween Special. 🎃🔥BG2 w/ Brad Gerstner - YouTube 
This has already caused consumer energy bills to skyrocket, showing how the AI infrastructure being built out is negatively affecting the average American. OpenAI has even called on the federal government to build 100 gigawatts of power generation annually, saying that it’s a strategic asset in the U.S.’s push for supremacy in its AI race with China. This comes after some experts said Beijing is miles ahead in electricity supply due to its massive investments in hydropower and nuclear power.
Aside from the lack of power, they also discussed the possibility of more advanced consumer hardware hitting the market. “Someday, we will make a[n] incredible consumer device that can run a GPT-5 or GPT-6-capable model completely locally at a low power draw — and this is like so hard to wrap my head around,” Altman said. Gerstner then commented, “That will be incredible, and that’s the type of thing that scares some of the people who are building, obviously, these large, centralized compute stacks.”
This highlights another risk that companies must bear as they bet billions of dollars on massive AI data centers. While you would still need the infrastructure to train new models, the data center demand that many estimate will come from the widespread use of AI might not materialize if semiconductor advancements enable us to run them locally.
This could hasten the popping of the AI bubble, which some experts like Pat Gelsinger say is still several years away. But if and when that happens, we will be in for a shock as even non-tech companies would be hit by this collapse, exposing nearly $20 trillion in market cap.
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Contributing Writer
Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
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40 Comments Comment from the forums
- darknightgarden
It's all useless slop that useless people a.k.a shareholders think is useful
People need to see how far these kinds of people are willing to go to achieve their goals, they've sacrificed their humanity because they care about money over people and the environment
- jp7189
Regarding GPT5 in your pocket, not anytime soon. These large datacenters will still have a place. Even if when a mobile phone arrives that can run gpt5 distilled down to e.g. 4 bit precision with results that are 80% as good, people will continue demanding that last 20% at a premium. E.g. a datacenter model at higher precision and parameter count.
- jp7189
How long until a place is found with 0 red tape to drop SMRs. SMR for power, river water for cooling, starlink for connectivity = massive tax revenue and exploding economy.
- hotaru251
jp7189 said:
Regarding GPT5 in your pocket, not anytime soon. These large datacenters will still have a place. Even if when a mobile phone arrives that can run gpt5 distilled down to e.g. 4 bit precision with results that are 80% as good, people will continue demanding that last 20% at a premium. E.g. a datacenter model at higher precision and parameter count.
at the point a phone can do that your gaming pc would do full model good enoguh and for less than cost of subscribing to use a datacenter...heck there is already business of selling peopels random compute for use by people who will pay for it.
- ZephirDX
jp7189 said:
How long until a place is found with 0 red tape to drop SMRs. SMR for power, river water for cooling, starlink for connectivity = massive tax revenue and exploding economy.
Drill baby drill for that hype! Screw ppl's actual livelihoods and that annoying red tape protecting them. Drive their electric prices through the roof! F them all I gotta have my personal digital yes man keep telling me how awesome my ideas that never actually materialize are.
You tool bag.
- cball
And yet: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-for-startups-exec-says-my-whole-job-is-begging-for-gpus-its-been-that-way-since-2020-says-that-ai-bubble-doomsters-are-deludedThe post on x was deleted now, this guy probably don't want to contradict his boss.
- trica
Nvidia fixed the GPU shortage? Amazing! So when can I expect a 5090 on the shelves at less than "screw you and your whole savings account" prices?
- Forge64
trica said:
Nvidia fixed the GPU shortage? Amazing! So when can I expect a 5090 on the shelves at less than "screw you and your whole savings account" prices?
Never. Nvidia likes things the way they are, they are building the top end without any restraint, and charging whatever they want, and people are paying it. That won't go away any time soon, maybe ever. The first steps down this road were the Titan models. Now X090 = Titan, with tons of stupidly expensive ram and chips that can literally warm up your house.
The X080 cards are what Nvidia would have been selling 10+ years ago as the top model.
- ekio
These people really live on a different planet… They have enough money to buy 50k gpu by 100000s but they can’t install them. In the mean time the average American struggles with their groceries….
- Tonet666
Hmm. Bill Gates now doesn't believe in global warming, what a coincidence.
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