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Article completely misses the true cause of the price increase - Sam Altman/OAI made a deal with Samsung and SK Hynix get 40% of their RAM wafer production for

Article completely misses the true cause of the price increase - Sam Altman/OAI made a deal with Samsung and SK Hynix get 40% of their RAM wafer production for the 2026 period. This was economic warfare against OpenAI's competitors, and the competitors along with the data centers responded by buying up every bit of DDR5 in sight. This price increase was engineered. The deal was inked on October 1, 2025, and rumors of it started swirling in September. Take a look at the RAM price charts. Anyone who attributes this just to "AI growth" has no idea what they're talking about. AI has been growing rapidly for three years and yet this price increase just happened exactly when Altman signed this deal. https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ It's also worth noting that IDC, who published this report, is wholly owned by Blackstone, who is also heavily invested in OpenAI. It would be prudent to be cautious about who you believe.

aunty_helen 10mo ago
After the dns entry, the stockpile of ram may be the most valuable asset that company has.
anon373839 10mo ago
Right! Raw wafers, not even memory. I have seen no evidence that this move was anything but a means of taking product out of the global supply chain.
- IAmGraydon 10mo ago
  That's correct and a good point I almost forgot about - they can't even utilize what they bought!
  - kubb 10mo ago
    It feels like abuse. They shouldn't be able to get away with such trickery.
    - GoatInGrey 10mo ago
      With a functional government, antitrust enforcement would prevent a single company from driving economy-wide price inflation out of an attempt to starve its competition. Since we don't have a functional government, we'll ungracefully take this up the ass.
    - blibble 10mo ago
      stockpiling solely in order to deprive your competitors of a commodity is anti-competitive and illegal
  - ThrowawayR2 10mo ago
    You do know that they can hire semiconductor packaging companies to put together memory modules the same way they bought the DRAM wafers, right?
    - IAmGraydon 10mo ago
      Sure thing. Are they? And also, why would they do that? Do you think OpenAI wants to enter into the DRAM manufacturing business? Or were they looking for a way to take as much supply away as possible - paying for the wafers instead of finished DRAM?
      - ThrowawayR2 10mo ago
        My word, how lacking in imagination. Are you forgetting that there's something that OpenAI does that requires lots of RAM and that OpenAI are very much in bed with not one but two GPU makers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45521629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45521629) they could send the wafers to to build hardware for them?
zozbot234 10mo ago
Doesn't Apple routinely do the same thing? Reserve chip production for the leading-edge nodes, and sometimes enter into similar deals for other tech such as displays? I'm not seeing any evidence that this was intentional "warfare" on OpenAI's part: they're just making a high-stakes bet that they can ultimately find a better and higher-margin use for that raw DRAM than HNers' gaming battlestations, or whatever the next-best use was when they made that deal.
- duped 10mo ago
  No, apple does not buy production capacity to prevent others from using it. They buy it to use it themselves. The wafers are not DRAM. This is more likely burning oil wells so your enemy can't use them. Wafers are to chips what steel blanks are to engines. You basically need clean rooms just to accept delivery and entire fabs to do anything. Someone who doesn't own a fab buying the wafers is essentially buying them to destroy them.
cedws 10mo ago
Not sure that OpenAI's move was a very good one, they've just created a lot of enemies for themselves. I see comments all over the internet about AI slop making RAM expensive. It's going to eat into the profits of a lot of companies. People will be willing for this insanity to end.
- krupan 10mo ago
  We can only hope you are right
- nebula8804 10mo ago
  So what? Intel has backstabbed many yet they cruised for a very long time. Mismanagement eventually stopped that train but it took 15+ years. There are no nice guys. This is business.
krupan 10mo ago
I hadn't heard of this, so I searched the web (without any help from an LLM, btw) and found this: https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...

aunty_helen 10mo ago

After the dns entry, the stockpile of ram may be the most valuable asset that company has.

anon373839 10mo ago

Right! Raw wafers, not even memory. I have seen no evidence that this move was anything but a means of taking product out of the global supply chain.

IAmGraydon 10mo ago
That's correct and a good point I almost forgot about - they can't even utilize what they bought!
- kubb 10mo ago
  It feels like abuse. They shouldn't be able to get away with such trickery.
  - GoatInGrey 10mo ago
    With a functional government, antitrust enforcement would prevent a single company from driving economy-wide price inflation out of an attempt to starve its competition. Since we don't have a functional government, we'll ungracefully take this up the ass.
  - blibble 10mo ago
    stockpiling solely in order to deprive your competitors of a commodity is anti-competitive and illegal
- ThrowawayR2 10mo ago
  You do know that they can hire semiconductor packaging companies to put together memory modules the same way they bought the DRAM wafers, right?
  - IAmGraydon 10mo ago
    Sure thing. Are they? And also, why would they do that? Do you think OpenAI wants to enter into the DRAM manufacturing business? Or were they looking for a way to take as much supply away as possible - paying for the wafers instead of finished DRAM?
    - ThrowawayR2 10mo ago
      My word, how lacking in imagination. Are you forgetting that there's something that OpenAI does that requires lots of RAM and that OpenAI are very much in bed with not one but two GPU makers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45521629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45521629) they could send the wafers to to build hardware for them?

zozbot234 10mo ago

Doesn't Apple routinely do the same thing? Reserve chip production for the leading-edge nodes, and sometimes enter into similar deals for other tech such as displays? I'm not seeing any evidence that this was intentional "warfare" on OpenAI's part: they're just making a high-stakes bet that they can ultimately find a better and higher-margin use for that raw DRAM than HNers' gaming battlestations, or whatever the next-best use was when they made that deal.

duped 10mo ago
No, apple does not buy production capacity to prevent others from using it. They buy it to use it themselves. The wafers are not DRAM. This is more likely burning oil wells so your enemy can't use them. Wafers are to chips what steel blanks are to engines. You basically need clean rooms just to accept delivery and entire fabs to do anything. Someone who doesn't own a fab buying the wafers is essentially buying them to destroy them.

cedws 10mo ago

Not sure that OpenAI's move was a very good one, they've just created a lot of enemies for themselves. I see comments all over the internet about AI slop making RAM expensive. It's going to eat into the profits of a lot of companies. People will be willing for this insanity to end.

krupan 10mo ago
We can only hope you are right
nebula8804 10mo ago
So what? Intel has backstabbed many yet they cruised for a very long time. Mismanagement eventually stopped that train but it took 15+ years. There are no nice guys. This is business.

krupan 10mo ago

I hadn't heard of this, so I searched the web (without any help from an LLM, btw) and found this: https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...