It's a 3 way prisoners dilemma market where the prisoners have been caught explicitly colluding before. Now they do not need explicit colluding anymore as the pattern and outcome has been established already and the "jail" is as good as closed to new entrants. Clearly the expected "market" is not working in this niche, so something will have to be done about it.
I honestly don’t understand how can anyone conclude that. All 3 players have their entire inventory sold + reliable reports that their entire next year’s inventory sold.
If you really are thinking from a game theory perspective, in order for it to be the prisoner dilemma, they each need to benefit from lowering prices individually (to cheat). But given that demand outstrips supply so much, they each just lose if they lower price, regardless of what the other players do.
They are making the thing. What they cannot do is see the future in all its particulars for anticipating how much of that thing to make. We alao don't want situations were we use up too many resources and end up with more ram than other chips (which would cause a different shortage).
These things are complicated, and people act like the mere existence of increased prices is evidence of malpractice. This is a naiive and juvenile attitude.
It isn't 'seeing the future', it is exercising your power in the present to control what futures are possible.
Like, for instance, forcing your customers to buy more chips than they can install, lest they be cut off entirely. Or increasing hypothetical demand artificially by breaking international smuggling laws using your girlfriend's shell company.
It is not 'naiive' (or naïve, even) to remember previous instances of crimes committed by exactly these companies using exactly the same tactics.
Unregulated markets create these predatory incentives, it shouldn't shock your or anyone that this has come to pass again.
> Judge Wise found that near-identical customer-vetting practices all three companies allegedly adopted in January 2026 "strongly support a plausible inference of conspiracy." She rejected the companies' "obvious and non-conspiratorial explanation" of booming AI demand, noting that the vetting began after the AI boom and the HBM pivot were underway.
Note, it's not just one thing, it's a combination of practices that make the collusion more likely explanation than otherwise
> All 3 players have their entire inventory sold + reliable reports that their entire next year’s inventory sold.
If they had started building new fabs earlier, they might have been able to sell even more inventory _and_ gotten back into the consumer market that they now neglect. Instead they've been way too slow to respond to demand or, in this case, purposefully didn't respond to demand.
But memory was dead cheap just a year ago. About 10 times cheaper. I don’t know if it’s reasonable to assume collusion here. It’s far more reasonable to assume they (and everybody else) didn’t anticipate the shortage.
No one anticipated that OpenAI would put in an order for 40% of the global supply of memory in 2025. And then it became a mad dash for everyone and that’s why we are where we are today.
I really doubt that it was a surprise. The big cloud providers talk to suppliers (and potential suppliers) frequently to telegraph future demand, both the amount of parts and specs.
No it was a huge surprise. I bought a 512 GB Mac Studio for $9k in April 2025 which was market. Even as recently as Jan 2026 I bought a 5070Ti for $750, the retail price. Now it’s $1500. No one anticipated the effects.
The analogy/classification works if you assume they engineered the scarcity through collusion. Then its "lower prices to win the market" vs "work together to artificially lower supply as a smoke screen to squeeze on prices."
The sense of scarcity factors into the ability to negotiate these contracts. Cooking the reports has a direct impact on contracts and does increase real demand.
The reason there are only three is that other players in their industry have been wiped out by investing in new production capacity to meet demand that doesn’t exist by the time they come online. It is very much an open question whether HBM demand growth really continues as forecast - it could collapse dramatically for various different reasons.
[−]londons_explore · 2026-11-15 Sun 19:13 UTC ·
link
Isn't this what contracts for future delivery are for? Pass the risk on to the customer/financial markets.
If you really are thinking from a game theory perspective, in order for it to be the prisoner dilemma, they each need to benefit from lowering prices individually (to cheat). But given that demand outstrips supply so much, they each just lose if they lower price, regardless of what the other players do.
Failure to enforce this kind of thing gives us shortages of eggs and insulin too; It is a real source of social harm.
These things are complicated, and people act like the mere existence of increased prices is evidence of malpractice. This is a naiive and juvenile attitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing has been linked elsewhere, but I'll link it again.
It isn't 'seeing the future', it is exercising your power in the present to control what futures are possible.
Like, for instance, forcing your customers to buy more chips than they can install, lest they be cut off entirely. Or increasing hypothetical demand artificially by breaking international smuggling laws using your girlfriend's shell company.
It is not 'naiive' (or naïve, even) to remember previous instances of crimes committed by exactly these companies using exactly the same tactics.
Unregulated markets create these predatory incentives, it shouldn't shock your or anyone that this has come to pass again.
Note, it's not just one thing, it's a combination of practices that make the collusion more likely explanation than otherwise
If they had started building new fabs earlier, they might have been able to sell even more inventory _and_ gotten back into the consumer market that they now neglect. Instead they've been way too slow to respond to demand or, in this case, purposefully didn't respond to demand.
OAI would be doing the same.
The sense of scarcity factors into the ability to negotiate these contracts. Cooking the reports has a direct impact on contracts and does increase real demand.