Memory Cartel Allegations

Past price-fixing lawsuits, collusion accusations, skepticism about shortage legitimacy, and whether manufacturers are artificially constraining supply for profit

Many commenters characterize the memory industry as a blatant "racket," arguing that manufacturers leverage fabricated shortages and historical collusion to prioritize lucrative AI contracts over the needs of regular consumers. This perceived cartel behavior is viewed not as a failure of capitalism but as a deliberate rejection of it, with manufacturers accused of manipulating "feast and famine" cycles to extract maximum profit through price gouging. While some speculate that these companies are tempting fate by tethering themselves so closely to the AI bubble, others fear that government subsidies and a lack of domestic competition will keep prices permanently inflated unless emerging players like China’s YMTC can finally disrupt the status quo.

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Isn't this the case of money going from left pocket to the right, since these companies are owned by the same investment funds?

I wonder whether this is some kind of a racket.

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DRAM and to a lesser degree storage are notorious for their feast and famine cycles

(Well that and collusion)

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> Neither party apparently knew he was negotiating with the other.

I don’t buy it that two of the largest manufacturers of DRAM in the world, from the same country , didn’t know this. Even of you ignore each company’s intelligence teams, that’s also the job of the country’s internal intelligence services, to make sure they know what all companies are doing and then make it so they have the best leverage to gain as much as possible. Both companies would have known “somehow” and played hardball.

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I don’t know if they realize that collusion lends itself to feast/famine.

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No one at high levels is capitalist, in ideology or action. An ideological capitalist would be in favor of competition, but these people disdain it and collude regularly. The only 'capitalist' actions they take are by accident, the real goal is as much power/money as possible as fast as possible.

We don't even expect companies to plan long-term anymore, it's just moving wealth as fast as possible.

That isn't really a change, very few people could ever have been said to be ideological capitalists. (capitalist is not a word with a hard definition, but I'm considering it a different thing than the more modern pure libertarian zero-regulation ideology)

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Not a rec, but just my source: Atrioc (streamer, YouTuber) is good at gathering all the facts for the rest of us. There's many other things in play, like the Strait of Hormuz (helium, bromine). Ultimately it works out that the shortage, and shortage profits, will continue; the chip makers are probably going to continue to see record profits (as Samsung has).

The specific mix of factors could change at any time, but the supply chain is relatively inelastic, it will take some time to show up on price labels.

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Memory makers did get themselves into this situation by selling all wafers for empty promises and alienating everyone but OpenAI tbh. I do hope they end up holding the bag once again, cause after covid and the cartel thing they don't seem to ever learn their lesson on how to have the tiniest amount of integrity.

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> Soo ... how sure are we that the memory makers themselves are not going to be the ones holding the bag?

I hope they do, they did not have to agree to sell so much RAM to one customer. They’ve been caught colluding and price fixing more than once, I hope they take it in the shorts and new competitors arise or they go bankrupt and new management takes over the existing plants.

Don’t put all your eggs in the one basket is how the old saying goes.

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You think this window is short? We've been dealing with this for years and years, and to me it seems more like incumbent manufacturers are too comfortable milking cash cows.

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it's used for price gouging by the cartel

if anything, OpenAi might be in on it

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The people who fucked over consumers are left holding the back that they sold us out over?

Oh no!

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Good point. I think both AI companies and hardware makers should pay for the damage they caused to us here.

They act as a de-facto monopoly and milk us. Why is this allowed?

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Right, the second was a conspiracy to form a monopoly.

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It has the makings of a natural monopoly, except its compounded by RAM cartels colluding to shut out the last of the competitors.

Recently they had a second price fixing lawsuit thrown out (in the US).

Now with the state of things I'm sure another lawsuit will arrive and be thrown out because the government will do anything to keep the AI bubble rolling and a price fixing suit will be a threat to national security, somehow. Obviously thats speculative and opinion but to be clear, people are allowing it. There are and more so were things that could be done.

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I think the article has a giant blind spot as far as China is concerned , considering they have already a mature enough memory ecosystem via YMTC that Apple was considering sourcing from them. As well as continued expansion in the DRAM and HBM Fabs [1].
It feels like the memory cartel once again trying to incentivise their various govt to cough up some more tax breaks/funding to cushion the AI buildout bet that they made and the bubble seeming about to pop.
In any case if they leave the consumer market underserved it should be no surprise if before that 2030 prediction we are all on cheaper YMTC memory modules.

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ym...

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Maybe if they had no competitors...

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What’s the lose scenario for them? They’re basically a cartel, and you need ram irregardless. If they make less it’s still a cost:demand, just not the most optimal for them. They’ve done that math, and figure this is the best risk and reward for them. Your goodwill or opinion doesn’t matter to them, because you need them more than they need you.

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> They’re basically a cartel,

The lawsuits in the past prove that statement to not be basically but actually.

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It will last forever. After covid, all manufacturers understood the value of limiting supply and extracting profits. Cars used to super cheap before covid, they will never go back to the same levels.

From now on, RAM will always be super costly for consumers, because they can't make massive deals like Apple/OpenAI/etc. We are the bagholders.

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let the analyst and news say what they want - the entire situation is artificial and is up to the manufacturers.

the current relative spike in the prices misses the medium-term trend of the vast decrease in memory price post-covid that led to the recent surge. the cartel got another opportunity to make bank and they will use that lever to the max.

funnily enough i've been personally stuck with 16 gigs since 2015, across three memory generations! but i am used to the past when you would spend 80-100 on an 8gb stick (jdec timings, nothing fancy but from a major brand) without accounting for inflation.

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Your instincts are likely right on this one OP. Memory prices surged 80–90% in Q1 2026 compared to Q4 2025, DRAM, NAND, and HBM all at record highs. 3 suppliers for the entire planet?

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I fear that the real reason we do have a shortage, I mean, the real reason for the demand, is AI companies scooping what they can so that their competitors, whether existing or incumbent, can’t get to it.

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Fabricated shortage to fasten US Chip Act and US Chip Security Act

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