Ask an AI engineering lead what gives them the most trouble these days and the model itself rarely comes up. The real problem sits one layer below, in the infrastructure, and it comes down to a single question: how much GPU capacity should we actually secure? A March 2026 Akamai survey of 200 AI practitioners put a number on that feeling. 65.9% of AI-native teams named GPU capacity planning the hardest challenge they face when scaling, ranking it above every other operational