Amazon's push into artificial intelligence faces significant hurdles because of power shortages at some U.S. data centers. [3, 6] Its cloud computing division, AWS, has rapidly acquired billions of dollars in advanced Nvidia server racks. [8, 9] But insufficient power has delayed deployment, leaving expensive equipment idle in warehouses. [2, 3, 6]
The idle hardware, known as “dark GPUs,” is creating financial pressure for Amazon. [3, 15] Buying equipment before data centers are ready ties up capital in assets that generate no revenue. [8, 11] The bottleneck is shifting from acquiring scarce AI chips to securing the infrastructure, including power, needed to run them. [4, 8]