The bottleneck is the strategy

This is a mostly qualitative tracker, providing a time series of insights into IT bottlenecks, inspired by:

• The bottleneck is the strategy
• Unlocking Velocity: Why Bottlenecks Are A Powerful Strategy
• 20th Century Tech Bottlenecks: Transistors, Spectrum, and Bandwidth

During October 2025, multiple OpenAI representatives stated that compute is the bottleneck.

However, it is inevitable that at some point, there will be multiple gluts and some people will get burned as in every other infrastructure [boom] cycle.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella in TBPN says the ultimate rate limiter is the overall economy.

Tech will become a bigger percentage of the economic pie. However, because tech will drive the rest of economy, the growth of the rest of the economy will determine if tech goes from 4% of GDP to 10% or to 15%.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella on the BG2 pod:

• GPUs sitting in inventory doing nothing because data centers, close enough to power, cannot be built fast enough. Power is the bottleneck.

Another insight was that compute goes to different areas: Azure, research, ... when pushed, acknowledged that Azure could have grown faster if it had more compute.

Clearly there is:

• A big picture issue of how fast data centers can be built with power availability
• There is allocating compute across different activities
• There is the rate of chip innovation - don't have too many chips of one model sitting on the shelf, because the next model maybe released while they sitting on the shelf.

Bonus quote: At scale, nothing is a commodity.