The AI gold rush is breaking the channel supply chain, and some partners are doing deals without knowing what the final price will be.
“It’s very, very difficult for them right now to commit to ship times, manufacturing times, it’s very difficult for them to even commit to pricing,” Logicalis U.S. CEO Jon Groves said of major vendors.
“We’ve had deals where the prices change in flight. That’s not uncommon right now,” Groves said.
Memory constraints, AI infrastructure demand and hyperscaler consumption are distorting the hardware market at scale. Groves doesn’t single out suppliers, but he’s clear that this isn’t isolated.
“It’s more than one,” he said of vendors unable to lock in pricing. “Everything that you don’t want to have happen in your supply chain right now is happening.”
There have been reports of both Cisco and HPE updating their terms and conditions to allow them to adjust pricing on orders already dispatched.
Unlike the COVID-era disruption, this isn’t just elongated shipping cycles. Partners are dealing with dynamic pricing volatility, fluctuating availability and compressed decision windows. Customers are rushing orders, vendors are revising quotes and partners are absorbing the shock.
“It’s a dynamic world we’re in right now,” said Groves. “Very, very different.”
CIOs are investing in AI — but can’t scale
The volatility comes at a time when AI spending is accelerating, according to Logicalis’ recently published survey of more than 1,000 CIOs.
Nearly every respondent — 94% — said they planned to increase AI investments. Yet more than half acknowledged adoption is moving too fast. Two-thirds said they cannot scale AI beyond initial deployments. And 62% admitted to compromising on governance due to limited knowledge.
“What we’re seeing from CIOs is clear: AI ambition is high, but the real challenge is turning that ambition into something scalable and secure,” Groves said. “The opportunity now is to help organizations move from experimentation to dependable, governed capability.”
The problem is acute in the U.S., according to Groves.
“AI is moving faster than most organizations can comfortably govern,” he said. “In the U.S. market especially, success will come from helping CIOs balance speed with security, accountability, and long-term resilience.”
That governance gap, he argues, is where the channel’s next opportunity lies.
AI compliance as the next managed services frontier
Logicalis U.S.’ recent acquisition of Maple Woods in the GRC space signals where Groves believes value is shifting — from managing devices to managing business risk.
“We’re not just a service around professional services or managed services — manage this device, manage that device. We see our services going more upstream, providing more business value,” he explained.
The focus areas include HIPAA in healthcare, CMMC for Department of Defense suppliers and, increasingly, AI governance.
“The next thing you’ll see come out of us is really, how can we provide AI compliance?” said Groves. “How do we bring as a service controls to your business that allow you to really control the data that you’re exposing?”
With 76% of CIOs in the report saying unchecked AI is a serious concern, and 94% planning to lean more heavily on managed service providers, the compliance layer may prove more lucrative than AI deployment itself.
Internally, Logicalis U.S. is positioning itself as what Groves calls an “AI-first company.” But notably, this is not about cost-cutting.
Logicalis U.S. employs around 650 people. Groves said he makes a point of telling them: “AI will not affect this number. It will not decrease it. But I also think that AI will not increase it either.”
Instead, he said: “I don’t see an opportunity really for us to do a lot more ... using AI as a component for cutting our costs. But what I do see AI as is an enabler for us to do more, to do it faster, to do it more intelligently.”
Every business unit within Logicalis has an AI strategy. Each reports back to executive leadership on progress. The aim is to orchestrate both inside and outside the organization.
Despite supply chain turbulence, Logicalis U.S. has reported significant improvements in EBITDA and gross margin over the past four years.
The company is debt-free and has, in Groves’ words, “dry powder” for acquisitions.
Logicalis’ strategy is to continue moving higher up the value stack, embed more deeply into client risk management, and turn AI hype into opportunity.
