Frontier labs don't use most AI compute (yet)
Frontier AI labs, including OpenAI and Anthropic, currently utilize only a fraction of the global AI compute resources available. Despite significant growth in revenue and funding, these labs collectively account for less than half of the world's operational AI compute supply. Future growth in AI capabilities may depend on an acceleration of overall compute production, which could require substantial economic changes.
- ▪OpenAI's compute usage represents about 10% to 15% of the world's operational AI compute supply as of the end of 2025.
- ▪Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to grow their compute share rapidly in the coming years.
- ▪The total AI compute available globally has reached the equivalent of around 20 million Nvidia H100s, funded by significant capital expenditures.
2 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 27 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
- ▪ Frontier labs don't use most AI compute(yet) — Epoch AI
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Gradient UpdatesFrontier labs don’t use most AI compute (yet)But Anthropic and OpenAI may rapidly grow their compute share in the next few years. After that, continued scaling would require an economic transformation.Josh YouMay 21, 2026254ShareGradient Updates shares more opinionated or informal takes on big questions in AI progress. These posts solely represent the views of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch AI as a whole. The estimates of frontier developer compute discussed below are more tentative than our standard data work.OpenAI kicked off the AI boom when it launched ChatGPT in 2022.
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