Every 3-4 years RAM prices spike.
There is always an excuse like a fire in a factory.
I believe the truth is 1) we have little amount of suppliers, and 2) supply is very near the limit of what can be sold.
There's also been not one but two price fixing settlements at different times for the same companies. Almost like every few years they get bold enough to try again, and just settle as the cost of doing business
Isn't this just the normal process of market clearing, if they are still selling out? It may be a bit coarse grained due to long lead times for more supply but still.
Yep, it doubled in the last 4 months https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Zc-FsUDCM
I upgraded my PC by adding 64GB.. two Fridays ago I sold the 32 GB I took out for the same amount of what I paid for the 64 GB in July... insane
> memory suppliers have both the motive and precedent to coordinate behavior, even tacitly, in order to keep prices high. When only a handful of firms control the taps, it doesn't take a formal cartel for them to collectively benefit from constrained supply. 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. The backdrop of past cartels makes it hard not to be cynical when hearing that "AI demand" is solely to blame for increased prices. Whether or not any collusion is happening now, it's clear that memory companies are profiting immensely from the current crisis. After bleeding financially during the last oversupply downturn, the major DRAM makers are now seeing record-high earnings in the third quarter of 2025 thanks to the price surge, and to put it bluntly, the shortage is great for business.
Every 3-4 years RAM prices spike. There is always an excuse like a fire in a factory. I believe the truth is 1) we have little amount of suppliers, and 2) supply is very near the limit of what can be sold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
There's also been not one but two price fixing settlements at different times for the same companies. Almost like every few years they get bold enough to try again, and just settle as the cost of doing business
Isn't this just the normal process of market clearing, if they are still selling out? It may be a bit coarse grained due to long lead times for more supply but still.
Yep, it doubled in the last 4 months https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Zc-FsUDCM I upgraded my PC by adding 64GB.. two Fridays ago I sold the 32 GB I took out for the same amount of what I paid for the 64 GB in July... insane
This quote is basically the TL;DR:
> memory suppliers have both the motive and precedent to coordinate behavior, even tacitly, in order to keep prices high. When only a handful of firms control the taps, it doesn't take a formal cartel for them to collectively benefit from constrained supply. 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. The backdrop of past cartels makes it hard not to be cynical when hearing that "AI demand" is solely to blame for increased prices. Whether or not any collusion is happening now, it's clear that memory companies are profiting immensely from the current crisis. After bleeding financially during the last oversupply downturn, the major DRAM makers are now seeing record-high earnings in the third quarter of 2025 thanks to the price surge, and to put it bluntly, the shortage is great for business.
"For context, these increases have even outpaced the surge in gold prices over the same period"
And you can't just manufacture or not the gold supply into scarcity
You’ll own nothing, not even your own short term memory, and you’ll be happy.
you will own liabilities and be happy
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Companies will always seek to maximize revenue. Your options are 1) don’t buy 2) choose competition.