Inference Economics & Hardware Race Climaxing

Hyperscaler capex surges ($725B 2026), token cost crisis, open-weight models (DeepSeek V4 Pro, Qwen3.8) driving cost advantages. Big Tech's spending narrative shifting from burden to growth driver (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud accelerating). Community backlash and non-financial bottlenecks (power, labor) threaten buildout timelines. GPU shortage squeezing startups.