The Cloud Has Come Back Down to Earth

Five years after his last appearance, Jay Kannan, CFA, a research analyst on William Blair’s global equity team, returns to The Active Share to explore how technology has fundamentally transformed from software and services to infrastructure and hardware. Where Hugo and Jay’s 2021 conversation centered on e-commerce and cloud adoption, their discussion this time around focuses on the physical constraints powering AI—from semiconductor bottlenecks and substrate shortages to power grids and the cascading supply chain effects. Together, Hugo and Jay examine why demand for compute far exceeds supply, where value is captured across the stack, and what's breaking under the weight of explosive token growth.