I pray someone steps into the market and takes all their consumer/SME business from them. I know thats not that simple or at all probable, but it would be great time to take market share and great for us little guys.
Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
221–230 of 328 posts
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll add that the GPU, CPU, storage, and RAM industries crashed in 2022 after a Covid-induced boom.[0] Everything was cheap. Samsung sold SSDs at a loss that year. TSMC and other suppliers did not invest as much in cap ex in 2022 and 2023 because of the crash. Parts of the shortage today can be blamed by those years. Of course ChatGPT also launched in late 2022 and the rest is history. [0]www.trendforce.com/presscent…
I bet the same thing happens when the AI bubble pops. "but this time is different, it's not a bubble, there's real value there" Economists use the term “bubble” to describe an asset price that has risen above the level justified by economic fundamentals, as measured by the discounted stream of expected future cash flows that will accrue to the owner of the asset. I think there's little argument that is happening, the…
The entire global software industry is worth less than $1 trillion dollars. Or in other words smaller than the current valuation of just OpenAI + Anthropic.
Is Microsoft 3x more important than OpenAI and Anthropic combined? Personally no. I think the value generated by OpenAI and Anthropic will surpass Microsoft.
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Normally this wouldn't be a problem: prices would go up, supply would eventually increase and everybody would be okay. This sounds like economic dogma based on pointing at some future equilibrium. I like the saying that goes something like "life is what is happens when you are waiting for the future". In the same way, it seems to me that equilibrium is increasingly less common for many of us. Markets are dynamic sy…
Yes, this is why the prices of housing has dropped dramatically. The market stepped up and filled the demand needed and now everyone can afford a place to live .....
The housing market is a textbook example of the opposite of a free market. In most markets, anything that does not "improve the character of the neighbourhood" is impossible to build by design.
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll add that the GPU, CPU, storage, and RAM industries crashed in 2022 after a Covid-induced boom.[0] Everything was cheap. Samsung sold SSDs at a loss that year. TSMC and other suppliers did not invest as much in cap ex in 2022 and 2023 because of the crash. Parts of the shortage today can be blamed by those years. Of course ChatGPT also launched in late 2022 and the rest is history. [0]www.trendforce.com/presscent…
I bet the same thing happens when the AI bubble pops. "but this time is different, it's not a bubble, there's real value there" Economists use the term “bubble” to describe an asset price that has risen above the level justified by economic fundamentals, as measured by the discounted stream of expected future cash flows that will accrue to the owner of the asset. I think there's little argument that is happening, the…
> The entire global software industry is worth less than $1 trillion dollars
Are you saying "worth" as a shorthand for something like annual profit? If you sort the 2025 data by earnings, you get pretty large numbers quickly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_technology_com...
That's not how you should measure "worth". In that world, you'd have a P/E ratio of 1. Comparing to a bond, it would be like expecting to get paid the face amount in a single year. Many people are quite happy with 5-10% interest as a risky benchmark, so 10-20 P/E isn't wild. That puts the market cap for tech itself at 10-20T as a reasonable baseline.
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree. I wrote the top comment here basically saying the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46764223 If big tech prepays for the entire fab, I think TSMC would do it.
if what Elon recently said is true ( if - but he might not be... inaccurate... on this particular thing) they already have and bought the forward production capacity of those new fabs and it still isn't enough.
I believe that. TSMC would have to start another fab or two.
PS. I'm pretty sure Intel is also at max capacity. They cancelled a bunch of fabs a few years ago when they were on a spiral.
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll add that the GPU, CPU, storage, and RAM industries crashed in 2022 after a Covid-induced boom.[0] Everything was cheap. Samsung sold SSDs at a loss that year. TSMC and other suppliers did not invest as much in cap ex in 2022 and 2023 because of the crash. Parts of the shortage today can be blamed by those years. Of course ChatGPT also launched in late 2022 and the rest is history. [0]www.trendforce.com/presscent…
I bet the same thing happens when the AI bubble pops. "but this time is different, it's not a bubble, there's real value there" Economists use the term “bubble” to describe an asset price that has risen above the level justified by economic fundamentals, as measured by the discounted stream of expected future cash flows that will accrue to the owner of the asset. I think there's little argument that is happening, the…
The problem is "markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent". It doesn't matter when the bubble pops if the governments (especially the US') bail those companies out.
The damage is already being done, whether you are a 401k/IRA holder with a position on the S&P 500 way too overweighted by the Mag7&co and their circular dealings, or just needing to buy computer parts way over their market value because some companies are over-leveraging to outcompete you for that hardware (or electricity), or even at a smaller scale by increasing software costs because everything is "AI-powered" now and of course you wouldn't want only "deterministic" software that just works and doesn't have a slop machine integrated.
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#227The reason this is a problem is because whatever value AI may have (personally I’m as long as one can get), companies believe that right now it’s a government sponsored financial bubble.
So they’re unwilling to spend on increasing capacity because they don’t expect this demand to last.
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#228There's clearly easy/irrational money distorting the markets here. Normally this wouldn't be a problem: prices would go up, supply would eventually increase and everybody would be okay. But with AI being massively subsidized by nation-states and investors, there's no price that is too high for these supplies. Eventually the music will stop when the easy money runs out and we'll see how much people are truly willing t…
Regardless where demand comes from, it takes time to spin up a hard drive factory, and prices would have to rise enough that, as a producer, you would feel confident that a new hard drive factory will actually pay off. Conversely, if you feel that boom is irrational and temporary, as a producer you’d be quite wary of investing money in a new factory if there was a risk it would be producing into a glut in a few years…
You're talking about how higher prices can motivate higher supply. The parent commenter was talking about how higher prices shift the current point on the demand curve to the right. If hard drives sold for $1 billion per gigabyte, we wouldn't see even AI companies buying as many as they are, and current production would go idle. Even assuming supply is locally inelastic (as it is given no time or space to scale, or given a lack of confidence that scaling is wise), you should be able to find a price point that avoids supply shortages by manipulating demand.
Thus far, we've not found that point.
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are indeed planning for more fabs, in order to meet volumes. Last week: “TSMC's board approves $45 billion spending package on new fabs” https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ts...
Silicon Valley is arguing that TSMC isn't investing enough. They should be investing hundreds of billions to build fabs, like how big tech is investing in the AI buildout. $45 billion for new fabs is peanuts compared to Amazon's $200b and Google's $180b investment in 2026. Can't really blame TSMC though. It takes years for fabs to go from plan to first wafer. By the time new fabs go online, demand might not be there.…
Ah, that "lays off 50,000 workers because of overhiring" oracle-of-farsight big tech?
Little easier than "laying off" a billion-dollar fab, isn't it?
Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is why the prices of housing has dropped dramatically. The market stepped up and filled the demand needed and now everyone can afford a place to live .....
The housing market is a textbook example of the opposite of a free market. In most markets, anything that does not "improve the character of the neighbourhood" is impossible to build by design.
Most chunks of the computing market should be thought of as a text book example of a 'free' market that operates with collusion with the few well monied "competitors" ensuring they don't put each other out of business.
Lets say you wanted to jump into the hard drive producing market. It's going to take you a few years to get there and a lot of billions of dollars. By the time you're close to producing units the existing players will suddenly drop the prices to the point where you cannot produce profits for as long as they need to. Aka, your competitors can collude longer than you can remain solvent. And yes, in two decades you will win the court case against them. And other than a fine nothing will happen because they're are so few manufactures that they are too big to fail.