> 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.
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.