Technology

This could be a fomo tactic….

The prices will never go back to normal because that's not how pricing works. Once its proven that consumers will pay the price, they will modulate supply to keep the price where it is. Why do more for less when they can do less for more.

We're fucked. It's not going to get better. Act accordingly.

They're basically saying the AI companies are going to keep demand elevated to the point that supply will never catch up. It's possible but with variables like public backlash, unrealistic power requirements, eventual financial and AI regulation, I would bet on a painful collapse.

I wouldn't say "never," but it's very likely that RAM prices will not return to pre-AI (read: bullshit) levels. Many markets do this; hike up to crazy levels during a boom, come back down 80%, rinse and repeat.

The only thing that might put a stop to it is competition or the unicorn business that focuses upon everyday consumers and not purely profit (lol). I'm hopeful China is able to be a spoiler to this current tech hegemony, given general US hegemony is basically over, but the home computing market is probably fucked in the meantime.

That assumes Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron won't have competition in the next few years, but that's already not true with the Chinese CXMT and YMTC. And the more they drive the prices up, the highest the reward for a new competitor to get established. They have a few good years (for them) charging these prices, but it won't last.

You can bluff all you want the hallucinating multi trillion dollar scam that by design cant always guarantee 100% accuracy is a scam from the start. Scam Altman

Don't doom too much about this headline. HBM contracts represent artificial AI demand. When the bubble pops (and it will pop), the HBM demand evaporates and it's back to competing for consumers. That said, there will be a very slow ratchet to get back to consumer-competitive prices, because as component costs go down, additional companies will be "priced in" to speculative AI business models, even if hyperscalers and other AI-drunk multinationals are backing off.

Regardless of whether there is a bubble, though, AI spending is ludicriously, unsustainably inflated even from existing memory customers. They are purchasing one-time AI infrastructure that needs to last a decade to even have a remote chance of paying off the hardware investments. There are only a few companies that can afford current AI pricing, those companies have already played their hands and paid for allocations, and they will not keep purchasing at this pace even in their own best case scenarios.

Regulation could keep consumer prices down, but of course we're in the bad Trump timeline and that won't happen until at least 2028. Assuming the bubble pops before then, the key to resetting this "new normal" is to NOT purchase anything you do not need to until we're back to $80-130 / 64GB or cheaper, like it was in 2025. Hold out, make them desperate to lower prices.

I'll stick to chess and keep my humble elderly gaming laptop for another 40 years with Linux

We've seen with other industries that the prices never come back down once they've gone up.

That said, expensive RAM kits (and a lot of tech in general) are not exactly a mandatory purchase for many people like food is. Those that can stop buying expensive electronics certainly will once the price is too high.

Grocery companies price gouge and shrinkflate because their customers don't really have a choice other than to starve. What are tech companies going to do when customers go an increasing amount of years between purchases?

Because it doesn't want it to go back to normal

Was Lenovo one of the companies who signed 4 year profit gravy train contracts with one of the big 3, return of the RAM cartel? This kind of statement might suggest they did.