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For the last two years, the AI story has been all about GPUs. But a quieter shortage is now building around an older, more overlooked chip, the CPU. Earlier this year, Amazon (AMZN) Web Services reportedly told its engineers to conserve CPU cycles as wait times for server capacity surged. The driver behind it is the rise of agentic AI. These are systems that work on their own, create smaller sub-agents, and use outside tools to complete tasks. The reason ties back to how these agents run. While the heavy AI thinking still happens on GPUs, the surrounding work leans on CPUs. This includes deciding the tool to use, running the code, and processing the results. AMD (AMD) says seven of the eight stages in a typical agentic pipeline run on the CPU. And because one agent can trigger hundreds or thousands more, that CPU work adds up quickly.
