Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months • Hacker News Board

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#381

Post by whaleofatw2022 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:32 PM UTC

davey48016 wrote: post #365

paol wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to expand capacity to fulfill this contract. They would want to expand capacity if they believed this increase in demand is long lasting - the implication is therefore that they don't believe it, or not enough to risk major capital expenditures. You saw the same with GPU makers not wanting to expand capacity during the Cryptocurrency boom. They don't want to be left holding the bag when the bubble pop…

Oil has been like that as well. High oil prices don't trigger nearly as much drilling as they used to. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oil-production-prices-us-compan...

Part of that equation, FWIW, is that certain countries would flood the market with supply to make any new projects suddenly unprofitable.

Which sucks extra bad because if you shut the project down but start it back up you can't just flip a switch. Gotta put together a whole new team and possibly retrain them.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#382

Post by kccqzy » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:47 PM UTC

HenryMulligan wrote: post #97

walterbell wrote: post #39

https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram... On October 1st OpenAI signed two simultaneous deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for 40% of the worlds DRAM supply... the shock wasn’t that OpenAI made a big deal, no, it was that they made two massive deals this big, at the same time, with Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously! In fact, according to our sources - both companies had no idea how big each other…

Sounds like OpenAI might be trying their hand at TPUs, like what Google has. They are one of Google's biggest advantages in AI right now. It would also give them insurance against Nvidia being everybody's hardware supplier.

What do you mean “might be” trying their hand? It’s been widely reported that they are doing exactly that. It’s even known that they are doing it with Broadcom.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/13/openai_broadcom_deal/

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#383

Post by kccqzy » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:53 PM UTC

immibis wrote: post #310

m-schuetz wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of space is usually ads and I doubt websites want to reduce that.

Apple could make it happen. For some reason when an iPhone won't load something, people blame the thing instead of the phone. If they made Safari show an error page when a page used more than 256MB of RAM, suddenly the problem would disappear overnight.

No. Safari is already so buggy that it often crashes with the “a problem repeatedly occurred” message. That same message is shown when a webpage requests too much RAM. The problem did not disappear. People rightfully blame iPhone.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#384

Post by redwood » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:57 PM UTC

davey48016 wrote: post #366

redwood wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very hard to believe that two South Korea based Chaebol memory producers would have no wind of this from the other.. more likely is that they both agree that it is not in their or the nation's interest to take on too much of a risk profile... while also balancing the risk of appearing to be colluding.

I wonder if they caught wind, but they both thought they were competing for the same contract.

Another way of making the point I'm making is you don't become one of the two leading memory producing capable companies in the world by being naive

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#385

Post by redwood » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:58 PM UTC

yifanl wrote: post #342

redwood wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only depends on whether they get addicted to the high prices.. as long as they can withstand a collapse in the prices then you're right they have minimal risk

Assuming they haven't massively changed operations to crank up supply, which seems to be the case, they shouldn't be massively hurt with a price drop. If this price goes on for a longer period though, I assume that won't be the case.

Well an example would be if they for example took out massive debts on the back of an expected Revenue stream

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#386

Post by loeg » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 9:01 PM UTC

deltoidmaximus wrote: post #315

loeg wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way or another. Either the AI stuff cools off, or the RAM people spin up more fabs.

They already said they aren't going to increase supply, most likely because they think the AI bubble will pop and they'd be stuck holding the bag.

Businesses occasionally change their mind in response to market conditions.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#387

Post by loeg » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

delfinom wrote: post #267

loeg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scroll down. The same trend is happening for DDR5 prices. It's AI demand.

More specifically, it's OpenAI quietly contracting away 40% of global DRAM capacity, only to build wafers of memory and shove it in a warehouse. https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...

They're not the only player trying to buy more RAM. Every hyperscaler is also growing.

AWS, MS, Oracle, and Google demand is growing ~100% in 2026. Nvidia demand is growing ~50% in 2026. Supply isn't forecast to improve at all until H2 2026 and it's probably ~all spoken for through at least EOY 2026.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#388

Post by Nevermark » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #330

Nevermark wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they are making higher margins, but not getting as much profit as they could have. Look at the standard Econ 101 supply-demand curve. If they could make and sell twice as many chips, it would not cut there margins anywhere near half. They would be making much more. When demand spikes up and down there will be pain. Because booms are not predictable, in timing, size or duration. And accelerating supply expansion is…

> If they could make and sell twice as many chips, it would not cut there margins anywhere near half. So they would be making much more. You really think that? I would expect their margins to drop down to a small percentage if they doubled production. Maybe even less.

Price spikes like we are seeing reflect tremendous pent-up/increased demand.

Any price increase reduces purchases by many customers. This tends to keep prices stable. With only small changes in price relative to regular changes in demand.

Yet prices have gone way up.

Which means that many people and businesses are cancelling, delaying, or scaling back their RAM purchases. And yet new demand is incredibly high.

To get prices down, supply would have to grow tremendously. Enough to soak up even more purchases from the very motivated, and to cover all the purchasers that have currently pulled back.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#389

Post by llama052 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #58

llama052 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynic in me thinks this would be a convenient way for these memory producers to manufacture demand, while also making OpenAI look good on paper. It’s not like they haven’t been caught price fixing in the past. Win win for these companies and a loss for everyone else.

If manufacturing fake demand (warehousing 900,000 memory wafers per month?) doubles and triples customer prices, it would decrease real demand, hurting the manufacturers after the artificial demand ends.

I think I explained that poorly. Basically artificially reducing supply so that these manufactures can get more for less. They've been caught doing it in the past before between each other, so why not use OpenAI as a bridge for that.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#390

Post by llama052 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

redwood wrote: post #286

Aurornis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big news story this cycle is that OpenAI secured two large contracts with two separate DRAM companies at the same time, carefully timing the deals so that neither DRAM company knew about the deal with other. Had either company known about the true demand from OpenAI they would have charged a lot more, but each only saw about half. In other words, there was no collusion between the DRAM manufacturers. They were bo…

I find it very hard to believe that two South Korea based Chaebol memory producers would have no wind of this from the other.. more likely is that they both agree that it is not in their or the nation's interest to take on too much of a risk profile... while also balancing the risk of appearing to be colluding.

It's more advantageous long term for them to be oblivious to it. Ultimately gives them what they want which is reduced supply and increased pricing for them.