Scarcity-Driven Innovation Under $700B CapEx
HanchungLee · x · 2026-07-14
In the quote, Dave Patterson notes that the CapEx for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta will exceed $700 billion this year, not necessarily because it makes the most economic sense, but because competitive pressure forces continued investment.
He compares this to his early days designing microprocessors: when you can't outspend your opponents, you have to take a fundamentally different technical path. This is often where breakthroughs happen, and in AI, academia might play a crucial role under such constraints. The original post adds that this almost perfectly describes the scarcity-driven innovation path taken by DeepSeek, 智谱, and Kimi.
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