Ben Horowitz says Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told him its AI compute is sold out beyond 2028, on the All In podcast
Ben Horowitz reveals Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told him its AI compute is sold out beyond 2028, and says that shortage makes this fundamentally different from the dot-com bubble “This shortage is so bad. You know, I was speaking with Andy Jassy, who runs Amazon, yesterday. And I said, yeah, like, we’re out of everything, you know, till 2028. He’s like, oh, it’s beyond 2028. Like, I don’t think we get stuff back, like, end of 2028, maybe. So everything else is sold out.” “So he has the advantage of that, he’s got supply in a great shortage, which is extremely different than the internet bubble. The internet bubble, we didn’t have enough demand, because we had to build the internet, people had to get broadband, you know, you needed all this stuff people had to buy, you know, originally, they had to get their browser at price, all this kind of thing.” “There weren’t enough consumers on the internet to absorb all the bandwidth that had gotten built out. And they had a massive amount of debt, not unlike we’re building today, although not as big. But the lack of demand killed it. We don’t really have a lack of demand in AI. So I think the dynamics will be different.” “I do think, like, for sure, if you get into a pathological debt situation, that can wreck anybody. It’s why, by the way, we’re not invested in any of these neo-clouds either, for that reason.”
Context
If the largest cloud provider has no spare AI capacity for years, compute scarcity will shape which AI companies can grow and how they finance it.
This is secondhand: Fireside Alpha is clipping the All In podcast episode where Horowitz was a guest host, and Horowitz is himself relaying a private conversation with Jassy. Amazon has not confirmed the remark.
Deep dive
On October 16, Fireside Alpha posted a clip of Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz from the latest All In podcast episode, which the show posted that evening with Horowitz filling in for David Friedberg.
In the clip, Horowitz says the shortage is so bad that when he told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy the day before that everyone is out of everything until 2028, Jassy replied that it is beyond 2028, and that he did not think Amazon gets capacity back until maybe the end of 2028. Horowitz says everything else is sold out.
He argues this makes the AI buildout extremely different from the internet bubble, when there was not enough demand to absorb the bandwidth that had been built, along with massive debt. He says AI does not have a lack of demand, so the dynamics will be different, though a pathological debt situation can wreck anybody, which he says is why his firm has not invested in any neoclouds.
According to episode summaries, the discussion came during a segment on CoreWeave's debt selloff. Jassy said on Amazon's August earnings call that it would not have enough capacity to meet demand in 2026 and expected the same in 2027.
What to expect next
Watch whether Amazon or Jassy confirm the timeline publicly, for example on Amazon's next earnings call, and whether other cloud providers describe similar shortages.
Also watch how the debate over an AI bubble develops as debt funded neoclouds face rising borrowing costs. Horowitz's view that demand separates AI from the dot com era will be tested if spending slows or if supply catches up faster than he expects.