The tech world is “grossly underestimating” the amount of AI infrastructure needed and that’s changing the way tech companies are doing business, Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel told Semafor.

We’re already seeing shortages of components, and from Patel’s vantage point, it sounds like things are only going to get worse. Being in a “supply constrained business,” he says, changes some of the basic rules of capitalism, like selling to the highest bidder. “We’re carefully doing a balancing act,” he said. “You want to make sure that all those customers are hydrated,” he said, which means sometimes turning away the highest bidder when you don’t have the supply to offer them. In other words, you have to reserve some supply to keep the other customers happy, otherwise you’d only be selling to hyperscalers.

Patel also spoke about the security challenge of multi-agent implementations like OpenClaw and the tightrope companies have to walk in order to avoid falling behind. “If you have more human talent that’s dextrous with AI compared to another company,” the difference will be “night and day.”

Watch the rest of the interview here.