Artificial Intelligence: Citi‘s Inference Ahead - Models, Robots, & Captives

Research evidence excerpt

Artificial Intelligence: Citi‘s Inference Ahead - Models, Robots, & Captives

Viewpoint |

10 Jul 2026 05:31:34 ET │ 18 pages

Artificial Intelligence

Citi’s Inference Ahead - Models, Robots, & Captives

CITI'S TAKE

Heath Terry AC

After the release of three models from frontier model providers this week, +1-212-723-4624

average output token prices continued to climb while GPU rental prices heath.terry@citi.com

rose across Hopper and Blackwell instances (Figure 1). Both pricing trends

reflect the impact of accelerating enterprise adoption relative to supply, Shelby Spencer

which remains constrained even as new capacity comes online, with +1-212-816-0416

the temporary supply unlocks absorbed as fast as they appear. We expect shelby.spencer@citi.com

this excess demand to keep pushing pricing through the stack from power

to semi cap equipment to memory to compute, with the beneficiaries of Ashley Kim

persistent scarcity continuing to outperform. +1-212-816-6689

ashley.kim@citi.com

Not if but when. Driven by local resistance, labor shortages, and equipment Janna Withrowconstraints rather than any shortage in demand, data center construction delays

will, we expect, be a major feature of management commentary in the coming weeks +1-212-723-0439

as Q4’26 projects become Q2 and Q3’27 projects, based on our checks. We janna.withrow@citi.com

believe this will push the shape of the curve to the right without lowering it. As

incremental hyperscaler capacity becomes available and renewals benefit from

current prices, we expect market focus will gradually shift from CapEx revisions to

revenue acceleration, driving a reversal in recent underperformance.

Small favors. Previously captive, underutilized capacity being unlocked at