Recently, Intel's earnings warning caused quite a stir on many people's social media feeds. The chip giant admitted that in the short term, they simply cannot meet the demand for server chips from AI data centers. Once the earnings report was released, the stock price plummeted by 13%, closing at $48.26.

Looking at the specific numbers, Intel expects this quarter's revenue to fluctuate between $11.7 billion and $12.7 billion, whereas analysts had previously generally expected $12.51 billion. Even more disappointing is the profit side — earnings per share are expected to shrink from $0.5 to break even, which is a significant gap. Michael Schulman, Chief Investment Officer at investment firm Running Point Capital, bluntly stated: Intel's predicament is not a demand problem, but an inability to meet capacity. Although their product competitiveness is there and customer demand is hot, the capacity bottleneck has seriously delayed financial recovery.

More importantly, AI demand has suddenly exploded. Some cloud computing giants didn't anticipate how fierce this wave would be. Intel's CFO David Zinsner told the media that the current situation is — demand is extremely hot, but supply is powerless. This mismatch can be seen across the entire industry chain, from chips to servers to data center infrastructure, with too many choke points.