Is the GPU stock crisis due to a real shortage or has the market been manipulated? Players won’t like theory put forward by analyst
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- New report claims Amazon is buying more AI GPU racks than it can deploy in data centers
- One analyst links this report to Nvidia’s GeForce GPU supply issues, and theorizes there is a connection.
- The argument is that Nvidia is deliberately “filling channels” or, in other words, pushing too many AI GPUs to the detriment of gaming GPU chips.
Nvidia’s supply issues with its gaming GPUs are apparently the result of a strategy to get the AI giants to stock up on more graphics chips than they can handle, if new reports are to be believed.
There’s no way you haven’t noticed the stock issues surrounding Nvidia’s GeForce GPUs and the price hikes that have occurred in recent months, especially for high-end graphics cards.
Well, according to the thoughts of analyst and technology expert Ed Zitron (via RespawnFirst), who picked up a Business Insider report, the consumer GPU shortage is a direct result of Nvidia pushing artificial intelligence graphics cards at companies like Amazon.
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Business Insider tells us that Amazon (or rather AWS) is buying more Nvidia GPUs than it can deploy. Racks of AI graphics cards are apparently kept unused in warehouses until power is available in the data centers where they will be used (electrical capacity, not space, is the issue here).
Amazon is paying huge sums of money for these GB300 racks from Nvidia, and according to an internal email Business Insider received, a new ‘Early Rack Receipt’ process (purchasing these GPUs in advance, before installing them) resulted in the payment of about $5 billion worth of server racks in August 2026. Apparently, $3 billion more is being requested each month for the “foreseeable future” in another email.
We were told that an AWS team did not have a “clear planned path” to install the purchased racks; In other words, they’re not even sure when these GPUs could be used.
Zitron’s argument is based on a key phrase from the Business Insider report, where the author states that the reason for the policy change (Amazon only used to pay for racks when they were installed in a data center) is that “Amazon has to compete more for scarce resources while competing with rivals for access to Nvidia GPUs and other AI components.”
The conclusion Zitron comes to is that this basically indicates that Nvidia is making Amazon and others who buy AI GPUs compete with each other by agreeing to order a bunch of them at the time, more than they possibly need, otherwise they won’t get their allotment (presumably).
Analysis: GPU misery is clear enough to see
In short, these AI GPUs aren’t actually needed as such, not by Amazon in this amount, according to Business Insider’s report, but Nvidia is effectively pressuring the company to buy the chips, or as Zitron puts it, this is “deliberate channel stuffing.” Which means that Nvidia is artificially forcing this demand for AI to the apparent detriment of GeForce GPUs, with a lower supply of chips for those gaming cards causing price inflation and general misery for gamers.
Obviously we should take this with a grain of salt: that applies to Business Insider’s initial report, and doubly so with the theorizing that Zitron applies in addition to that article.
However, there is no denying that we have witnessed a frustrating shortage of consumer GPUs and, in particular, Nvidia’s high-end gaming graphics cards have become painfully scarce and expensive. The RTX 5090 is either unavailable except through third-party marketplace sellers who try to squeeze the best part of $10k out of it (in the US), or it’s horribly expensive, to the tune of over £6,000 in the UK, for example.
What’s worse is that the RTX 5080 is now getting ridiculously expensive too, reaching £1,400 in the UK. And in the United States, on Newegg, there is only one model for sale now (direct from the retailer) and it will cost you $2,000. Frankly, it’s all getting silly, and with rumors that the RTX 5090 is being discontinued (speculation that Nvidia has denied, I should be clear), it’s currently a disappointingly bleak outlook for GPUs.
The expectation is that things will only get worse for RAM, SSDs, and GPUs as next year rolls around, and that makes all the theorizing above seem a little more plausible. It’s certainly clear that Nvidia’s priority is AI GPUs rather than GeForce graphics cards because of the profits that come with AI, but of course Team Green is a business, so what do we expect? However, prioritization is one thing and the leveled accusation of the practice of “channel stuffing” is another entirely.
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