>Memory is being allocated to those with deeper pockets first
Yes, sellers fill the most expensive bids first.
>OpenAI's new "Stargate" project reportedly signed deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for up to 900,000 wafers of DRAM per month to feed its AI clusters, which is an amount close to 40% of total global DRAM output if it's ever met.
Right, so demand has pretty much doubled.
>In this cycle, manufacturers had cut back production and investment during the last downturn (2022), and they've been slow to ramp back up.
And manufacturers have been burnt by over production before and are cautious
>Another factor limiting supply of standard RAM is that memory firms are diverting their limited manufacturing capacity to the most lucrative products. Specifically, there's a gold rush for HBM, which is a special kind of memory used by AI accelerator GPUs, because HBM commands far higher prices and profit margins than commodity DRAM.
See above about filling the more lucrative bids first.
>I'm not saying that all of these reasons given aren't the cause for the recent price boom, but what I am saying is that it wouldn't be the first time that price-fixing occurred in the memory industry.
Ok so what should be done about it?
>While that second lawsuit didn't hold up in court (and failed in appeal), that ongoing suspicion exists for a reason.
K so there have been 2 claims, one spurious.
>Each firm knows that flooding the market would hurt all of their profits, so a form of unspoken coordination can occur, and this is next to impossible to prove.
See: Have been burnt by over production before. And Unspoken coordination is hardly an issue. Reacting to private information is bad, reacting to public information is normal and expected.
>It's hard not to see this supposedly coincidental aligned strategy of restraint and wonder if there's something more at play. All of these actions support pricing stability (for those companies) and suggests that no one is "breaking ranks" to grab a larger share by undercutting prices.
You are telling me that you are suspicious of an industry that has expanded, caused a glut that hurt their own businesses and killed their competitors, and are shying away from repeating that event that you outline as a clear mistake.
If theres so much money on the table, you will need another vendor. New RAM vendors have to weigh risk, including all the risk you have outlined, against what is likely a very massive capital outlay.