OpenRouter token surge and Anthropic outages reveal infrastructure strain
AI is growing so fast that the tech behind it just can't keep up. Between January and March 2026, OpenRouter's AI token processing shot up four times, putting a real strain on its systems.
By April, companies like Anthropic were dealing with daily outages as demand kept climbing.
AI firms cut services, secure deals
To cope, AI firms have had to make some tough calls.
Anthropic started limiting usage and changed its subscriptions, while OpenAI shut Sora, its video-generation tool, to redirect scarce computing power toward more lucrative uses.
GitHub stopped accepting new subscriptions for its programming bot.
Meanwhile, Anthropic locked in a massive $100 billion server deal with Amazon (plus got a $40 billion boost from Google) to try and stay ahead of the rush.
Maine and chip shortages constrain infrastructure
Building more AI infrastructure isn't easy either. States like Maine are pushing back against big data centers, and chip shortages are making things worse:
NVIDIA's H100 GPU rentals are up 30% since November, and key memory chips are already booked solid for 2026.
Even major chipmakers like TSMC are increasing spending, so there's still a big gap between what software can do and what hardware is ready for.