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500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much
by 1saadcodes 2mo ago
500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all
- luma 2mo agoThere are only 3 manufacturers (about to be 4 soon) total. This is a demand crunch the likes of which the market hasn't seen before, prices are doing the natural thing.
- cm2187 2mo agoYou make it sound like the crunch is caused by manufacturers, my understanding is that it is caused by the abnormal demand. I am not aware that RAM production is at a historically low level.
- luma 2mo agoDemand crunch comes from the customer. All HBM and DDR5 wafer capacity is sold out through 2027 and all three vendors are booking 2028 capacity. This was not created by the manufacturers.
- dawnerd 2mo agoThe manufacturers are not doing a whole lot to fix the problem l and I don’t blame them. It’s expensive to build out and they know demand will slow down and don’t want to be stuck with excess capacity. Better to be sold out and high prices. Samsung said they were “moderating demand” which doesn’t sound like they want this problem to be solved either.
- jpgvm 2mo agoIt's actually both. DRAM manufactures operate on a boom bust cycle and by 2023 there was significant oversupply. This meant even leading up to that they had already decided not to invest in further capacity explicitly to recover profit on their existing lines. So a lack of builds coupled with AI boom at the same time created a perfect storm with no new capacity coming online for years after demand rapidly escalated.
- georgemcbay 2mo ago> There are only 3 manufacturers (about to be 4 soon) total. ...3 manufacturers with a long history of price fixing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing
- radley 2mo agoUhm, your link states that they were price fixing over 20 years ago, and were in court for almost a decade. There was another accusation in 2018, but it was dismissed. That's not a long history of pricing fixing, just accusations.
- georgemcbay 2mo agoThe difference between 2002 and now is that it is so much easier to follow each other's leads on pricing without explicitly communicating about it and leaving a paper trail. But they never stopped acting indistinguishable from a cartel.
- throwaw12 2mo agowho is the 4th?
- ColdStream 2mo agoIf you are talking CXMT Apple recently learned the hard way that even with price fixed RAM from the big 3, CXMT is struggling to provide cheaper prices as they are using much older design/manufacturing systems. https://www.msn.com/en-xl/money/general/apple-s-cxmt-memory-deal-fails-on-price/ar-AA29JUex https://www.msn.com/en-xl/money/general/apple-s-cxmt-memory-...
- magic_hamster 2mo agoTo take advantage they'd have to do some form of price fixing which in most places is a very big footgun. I honestly don't think they need to fix their prices, and it's possible that selling to consumers is a secondary market for them compared to datacenters, like Nvidia selling GPUs to gamers. We know that's not where the money is. Seeing some companies actually exit the consumer market is evidence for this.
- imjonse 2mo agoIf it's a highly profitable footgun why not? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing#2026 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing#202...
- mapontosevenths 2mo agoIf something is illegal, and the punishment is a fine, it's not illegal it just has a cost. Is it worth the cost? Yup.
- minraws 2mo agoJust to be clear the big Memory giants are famous for their price fixing historically speaking.
- wlesieutre 2mo ago> To take advantage they'd have to do some form of price fixing which in most places is a very big footgun. When parent commenter says "They have done this in the past after all" that's exactly what they're talking about. Micron, Samsung, Hyinx (prior to SK Group acquisition), and others all participated in RAM price fixing in the early 2000's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing
- cm2187 2mo agoI don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to bid for the limited supply. Sucks for other buyers, on the other hand it ensures demand destruction, i.e. that the limited supply goes to the buyer who need it the most, other buyers will delay their purchase and do with what they have.
- solarengineer 2mo ago"that the limited supply goes to the buyer who need it the most" - I would say that the limited supply goes to the buyer who can afford to pay higher than others. Someone may need the memory more, but may not have the deeper pockets to pay for it like NVidia and Apple might.
- dist-epoch 2mo agoGamers may need the memory more, but AI labs can use the memory more productively
- t-writescode 2mo agoProfitably-for-the-fabs*
- lasthemy 2mo agoI would have framed it as "buyer who can get the most leverage from it", which equates to being able to spend more. It's an economic argument, not a values argument.
- bji9jhff 2mo agoYou suppose what you'll do with the ram has an incidence on your capacity to buy it which is only true if you are part of those able to get financing.
- aeturnum 2mo agoFWIW I have a friend who makes hardware and it's extremely difficult for him to secure memory at any price. Because AI people have locked up so much of the upcoming supply it's often not a question of how much it will cost but of finding someone who will sell you memory at all. If this were price gouging I would expect he'd have no trouble finding allocations at exorbitant prices but that doesn't seem to be the case.
- senderista 2mo agoThere are never shortages in a free market, just higher prices.
- kibwen 2mo ago[flagged]
- senderista 2mo agoAt a longer timescale than very temporary supply shocks, I believe what I said is correct. The basic point is that if supply contracts, demand must contract as well, which in a free market happens via price increases and in an unfree market happens via shortages (i.e., the inability of buyers to obtain a good at a market-clearing price). If high barriers to entry are relevant in this context (obviously they very much exist in the memory industry!), then please enlighten me how, if you are capable of doing so without unconstructive snark.
- Jensson 2mo agoBut currently we are in a very temporary supply shock, and its called a shortage. > in a free market happens via price increases and in an unfree market happens via shortages Since people have earmarked purchases in advance the market isn't free, I'm not allowed to buy the ram another person already bought. Its the same how the texas electricity market works, prices reach infinity since there are more consumers that have already bought electricity than there is electricity left to provide, and you get a shortage. Free markets with contracts aren't free since contracts creates constraints that results in shortages like this.
- throwaw12 2mo agoMicron for example discontinued their consumer business because of the demand from enterprise business.
- paulpauper 2mo agoWhat is also interesting is no one predicted this in 2022-2025 as LLMs were gaining widespread use. It just suddenly happened--"boom!" memory shortage in mid 2025 to early 2026,and it caught everyone by surprise. It was understood that the biggest bottleneck was "compute", not the memory. Even experts, such as popular AI bloggers, industry leaders, and top podcasters failed to anticipate this. No one on twitter either. I spend a lot of time online and I don't recall, afik, anyone before 2026 saying to buy memory stocks.
- layer8 2mo agoSam Altman laying claims on 40% of the world’s RAM wafer production is what took everyone by surprise. The supply shortage likely would have ramped up more slowly otherwise.
- XorNot 2mo agoMore importantly that did take subterfuge: there's no way a contract that large would've been agreed to by both manufacturers if they knew the other was signing it. The actual deals were hours apart and secret for that reason. It's hilarious watching the conspiracy theorists do their usual thing when there was an actual conspiracy, it was perpetuated by the inner circle of a US company and announced and publicized in full once it had achieved its goal.
- empiricus 2mo agoI think Leopold of "situational awareness" fame predicted this, tried to make it widely known on podcasts and x, and still started billions worth of hedge funding based on this.
- TacticalCoder 2mo ago> I think Leopold of "situational awareness" fame predicted this, tried to make it widely known on podcasts and x, and still started billions worth of hedge funding based on this. Ironically enough it's because of its bet on RAM companies that all of Situational Awareness' publicly trading stocks got bought by the highest bidder (Citadel) when the (leveraged) shit hit the proverbial fan and Situational Awareness created a hole of tens of billions. Situational Awareness was not forced to sell its share in Anthropic for, by contract, investors in Situational Awareness have no right to force the sale (before this month of September I think) of shares in companies not publicly trading yet. Citadel bought those RAM stocks right at the end of July, during the dip. Amazing timing for for example MU bounced back from $746 back to above $1000 (now around $950). Now Situational Awareness may still do exceptionally well: they've got $5 billion or so left in Anthropic AIUI.
- chriskanan 2mo agoSame thing happened with eggs in the USA with bird flu used as an excuse.
- fckgw 2mo agoWhich reversed in about 6 months and now eggs are are their lowest prices in nearly a decade.
- pydry 2mo agoThe same thing will happen with RAM. A glut will come eventually. It might take a year, maybe two.
- handedness 2mo agoIsn't next year's capacity already sold out? Is there any reason to hope for significant additional capacity to come online during that term?
- arlcode 2mo agoEventually 2028 and 2029 will come around and at some point today's data center builds will be (economically) full. In addition to that there are extra fabs build and (for example) China can use the high margin to catch up with their processes without breaking the bank.
- trollbridge 2mo agoWe can dream. I would do unspeakable things with 512GB of RAM.
- mjhay 2mo agoI had 512 in my desktop a decade ago
- handedness 2mo ago
- wonnage 2mo agoIt could be the economically rational thing to do if they think there is a bubble
- elictronic 2mo agoForming a cartel to rig prices is economically viable with or without a bubble.
- coldtea 2mo ago>and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it "Manufacturers taking advantage of it" wouldn't take it to 500% without AI, because it's way beyond the price elasticity points where they make up lost sales at higher prices. Those prices lose most consumer sales, and are only viable if there's constant high demand that's relatively insensitive to price (so, not regular folks, but e.g. AI companies).
- whattheheckheck 2mo agoDemand and manufacturers not increasing capacity. Eventually someone will manufacture more to undercut
- colechristensen 2mo agoThe problem is the scaling cycles for demand and supply are at different timescales. It takes a lot longer to build capacity than these bubbles take to form and pop and there is a SIGNIFICANT history of silicon manufactures scaling during a bubble then going bankrupt because their increased capacity never had the chance to make them any money.
- grubbusThewiz 2mo agoTaking advantage of Trump admin, AI hype, and setting themselves up as "too big to fail" for bailouts when demand eventually collapses See the tariff thing where Bessent bought rights to refunds It's all a really low tech con perpetuated by weak elders who need blue pills to simulate virility. Odd how they complain about the kids virtual reality. Oh no it's not either; it's intentional petty bullying
- ramijames 2mo agoI remember the cost of RAM in the 80s and 90s. If I remember correctly my mom paid ~$1000 for 32mb of RAM in 94/95. Something or other like that. While they have spiked this year, the trend is towards more RAM for cheaper. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-computer-memory-and-storage https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput...