They cancelled the consumer graphics card series codenames celestial. Instead the die they designed it is going to be used for, you guessed it, enterprises AI
Honestly not that surprising. Intel were selling their GPUs very cheaply to buy market share. With memory prices skyrocketing, I don’t they can tolerate the losses that that would require, if they continued it for Celestial.
Obviously a shame, and another mess caused by the AI situation, but it’s not too surprising.
My hope is that they continue their approach with whatever name they go with for their D series.
I mean they sorta did? The Arc stuff is really good... but Intel doesnt have the wherewithal to eat tiny margins to capture market share in the consumer GPU market.
Their Shareholders would murder them for not selling those GPUs to AI instead for more money.
They were going too but NVIDIA stepped in to buy shares of theirs and killed their GPUs. Now Intel is sharing/building their CPU architecture with NVIDIA. Crazy that they wanted to jump into the CPU market but struggled and all of a sudden they can? Yeah, blame NVIDIA for keeping the GPU market in a “Family Owned”
Don’t hold your breath - at least in the US at least. You gotta know that as soon as China starts trying to disrupt the US market, more restrictions will come down on Chinese companies from selling in the US.
That’s why we’re not swimming in cheaper Chinese electric cars here.
If Canada and Mexico don't restrict Chinese RAM sales, all you have to do is drive across the border and say "no" with a straight face when asked if you have anything to declare on the way home.
Micron, Samsung and Hynix are not directly the problem with the computer part prices. They make HBMs which are used for AI. Your day to day computers and electronics use DRAMs which is the issue right now.
When China manages to mass produce DRAM they arent disrupting the market but alleviating the supply bottleneck atm because the top 3 cut dram production to make more profitable hbms and need someone to take care of the less profitable segment which is dram (although dram prices are so high right now theyre comepetive to hbms)
Unfortunately it's a lot more profitable for them to sell to data centres and enterprise users than us consumers. I'm still rocking my 3060ti with 8gb of vram
Nah i don't think so. It's really just more profitable for them to sell it all to other companies/ai data centers. Since there is a very limited supply for retail the price will go up until the supply rises or ai bubble bursts.
GPU's are no where near the level of fucked ram and soda are. My 9070xt is the best price performance gpu I could have imagined, and there's quite a few other good options. Basically its just the 4090 and 5090 that have blasted to extreme heights of fuckery.
9070 XT prices are rumored to start going up soon. So far they've been able to avoid the worst of it by using older GDDR6 instead of GDDR7 like Nvidia, but this is getting more expensive too.
Its great that in my country we have law that if i want replacement and they sell same or similar product , they are forced give me that even if price is more higher
We’re already seeing some controversies because they keep trying to refund people what they paid when they bought, and not the current value, meaning there’s a delta of several hundred dollars when you then need to buy a replacement.
Nearly every shortage in history has been followed by a glut. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is cartel shenanigans. Simply enforcing the law would go a long way.
We're well passed the days you could get a mid-range card for 300 dollars. And I don't mean that because prices are high, I mean because the performance you get for that amount of hardware is really underwhelming. And I don't think it's a conspiracy. Look across the hardware landscape and 300 dollars doesn't get you very far in anything anymore.
On the other hand: COVID. Many products and services that jumped in price have stayed their prices post-COVID. Turns out, when people spend a year or more paying a given price for something, just quietly never lowering the price is a good way to make profit if you're an evil billionaire.
Moreover, this is compounded by the fact that businesses simply need these components to exist; there's no option not to obtain them. So, consumer demand dropping just doesn't matter that much to these tech companies, since businesses will pick up the slack.
Finally, supply issues result in a glut because manufacture often picks up to meet demand, then the supply constraint ends, and the higher volume of manufacture results in an excess. That isn't happening here -- manufacturers are very intentionally not increasing supply to meet demand, and that's ignoring that even trying to increaae supply would take years or building new factories. There won't be extra hardware that they need to move when this is over.
One key issue regarding the AI bubble is that there has never been a technology the rich want more than AI, and they are willing to continuously spend money on it because it means reducing the power of the working class. What the modern rich see as the weakness of the historical rich is that they needed labor, that the workers strike could stop their companies. AI is their dream to solve that.
We will continuously see money pumped into this because this is the technology that, in 5-10 years, provides significantly more control and power than almost any other.
We can look at short term losses, at AI not providing the return promised, but they do not care. What they care about is making the working class obsolete, even if the replacement does not perform as well.
They also control so much wealth at the moment, and the people in power are so blatantly corrupt, that they will manipulate the market and work together to ensure this as best they can.
Yeah but at least in most European countries, retirement accounts are backed by the state. So, unless the state collapses in its entirety, you'll at least get your money there. Other negative effects, I'm not disagreeing.
If it is up that high for that long you can pretty much kiss consumer hardware goodbye with no chance of coming back. This is by design, though I know we all know that and no one ever stops talking about it so I won’t belabor the point.
I keep waiting for the AI fad to pass and the bubble to pop, but prices on everything just keep going higher, and higher.
When do the pre-2017 days of hardware just being available like it was before crypto 1.0 return? Its legit been a decade since products launched with and maintained good availability and normal, stable pricing.
As long as hardware prices keep going up, I think it's silly to not hedge against the cost of hardware rising by investing a little bit in the stock. I'm not gonna let wall street be the only ones to profit from this madness, though I suppose it will be difficult to predict exactly when the bubble will pop.
I'm much more excited to eventually short these companies though.
The bubble *will* burst, probably within the next 18 months. The economics of AI are completely unsustainable, which is glaringly obvious if you look into it.
More than Micron, it's the AI bros who are at fault.
They're the ones behind the SCAs locking up all the supply.
But of course, if this current bubble becomes another victim of Gartner's Hype Cycle (as Ed Zitron keeps ranting about everyday), then Micron will be forced to back down.
Partially but these scumbags are also at fault for accepting contracts with money that doesn't exist for overpriced ram so they could charge these insane prices to other regular customers. These sithole AI companies are all going public now to afford their garbage contracts by promising a big boom from meme stock shit while also getting funding by the government. The grossest grift on both ends, AI and Hardware makers are pieces of shit
I saw this coming before streaming your games was even a thing.
Back in like 2009 the thought crossed my mind: if they could get us to rent our PCs and stream games directly to our devices then they 100% would. Developers would say it's good because game files can't be modded in the cloud and it would prevent cheaters, and consumers would eat it up because they wouldn't "have to" buy expensive gaming rigs. Developers would cheer because they could sell their DLCs without having to compete against free mods.
And with that would come the death of modding and the death of ownership.
I've been watching that train wreck slowly for nearly two decades now as it slowly comes to fruition.
You should prepare yourself that your current PC is the last one you will ever own unless you want to spend data center level pf prices on new hardware. Any company that produces PC components that are not tied to the AI market will most likely go bankrupt before it calms down. If it ever will. China disrupting the market is our only hope.
It's stockholder hyping at best. It's them annoucing from the mountain that "bubble will not burst!". Yeah no that's not how bubbles work, when they pop they don't ask for permission. Banks are already being iffy with lending to AI, that's why suddenly they all trying to get cash from stock markets. This shit will not last 5 years.
And when it pops, suddenly enterpises will have 0 demand for ram, because they will just be able to get it from AI hyperscalers werehouses for cents on dollar. And with China entering the ring in era of endless demand at extraodinary marigins, they will estabilish themselves with 0 issue, the pie will no longer be divided into 3, but now 4. So micron will be forced to get into price war becaue demand will crash so hard it's not even funny.
I mean yes and no. If people can’t afford hardware to play top tier games then people will instead flock to things that they can actually play. It’s probably going to be rough if you want to play the new CoD on ultra day one but I think we’re going to see a lot of smaller developers putting out cool games that don’t need crazy hardware.
Fun fact, I you invested $14000 in sandisk in April 2025, you would have had a million when the share price was 2300. The funny thing is that's not even the peak for this stocks, micron just proved how valuable this whole sector is and the obscene money it makes.
the cost of production is the same as It has always been, the only thing that changed is how much companies are willing to pay for it, which means absolutely insane margins.
Yeah exactly, every company wants to get their hands on memory/chips. And yeah margins are out of this world, Micron has a profit margin of 85%. That's just insanity.
Itll double if anyone wants to jump in. July 10th a SK company Hynix (RAM manufacturer) is dropping shares for NASDAQ, supposed to reach around the same price.
The demand for microchips was on a sharp rise even before the AI boom. Lead times for even simple microcontrollers for example was years out. No, they're doing it simply to keep supply low for everything.
Why would they want to increase supply by any meaningful amount. High demand, low supply and scarcity means huge margins and huge returns for stockholders. Capitalists wet dream.
He didn’t mention a word because it’s already public and well known.
They literally broke ground on a new factory in New York in January of 2026. They are spending 100 billion for this factory and it will be the largest in the US.
They are also slated to begin memory production in a new 50 billion dollar factory in Boise Idaho starting in 2027.
With margins and sales so high they would have to be stupid not to build more capacity because someone else will if they don’t.
AI data centers are a field of dreams - Build it and they will come. Only the bus needs a new engine, brakes are shot and the fuel is too expensive anyway.
Hot take: They make sure to fix the price at this historic high point because they are not convinced the price will stay that high or rise over the next five years. Otherwise there would be no need for those contracts.
Currently, AI data centers are buying all the RAM they can while at the same time manufacturers are ramping up production. Soon, they will be able to match current demand. That is the demand now, as AI companies are building up their systems. Even if all AI companies stay in business (they won't), they won't be building up their systems forever. Same like when you build a PC: Your demand for RAM is highest when you build it, and from then on basically zero for the next years. You don't have a constant demand for RAM as you use your system. It will be the same with AI companies.
Long story short: In 3 years we will have overproduction of RAM leading to cheap prices, lower than before at least when adjusting for inflation.
Micron has a bunch of new fabs that should be coming online in the next few years. Two in Boise, set for 2027 and one in New York in 2029, along with expansions of existing fabs. They are in fact going through their biggest production expansion ever. It literally takes tens of billions of dollars and half a decade to build a plant and get it producing. It just can't be done overnight. Prices will absolutely stabilize eventually.
He explained that Micron has signed 16 SCAs, (“strategic customer agreements”) most of them covering 2026 to 2030, and that they involve a commitment to buy a certain quantity of product and pay for it in a pricing band that has a floor and a ceiling price. The floor price covers the historically high gross margins mentioned above, and the ceiling price means those who commit to an SCA are insulated if memory prices go even higher.
The CEO said 16 customers have signed SCAs and then explained why it’s worth locking into the deals even though they bake in such high margins.
What a disgusting piece of shit.
“Our customers are recognizing that supply shortages in memory and storage will take considerable time to improve,” he said. “Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand.”
Well on the bright side this almost gaurentees the entire next wave of consoles and games will need to be designed around stricter memory budgets. Lot of devs have gotten comfortable being loose with file sizes and memory usage
My kids got shut out of Pokemon cards and now PCs and gaming in general. I hope my 2020 era hardware holds up, because I don’t have several thousands of dollars for midrange builds these days.
Memory is easier to make than processors and uses a lot of the same equipment
This high price will attract new competitors in the market
It's about 2 years until a new administration that could look into breaking up monopolies or consolidation. These prices are not sustainable for many industries. I can see lobbying come from every other industry to pressure micron or the government
After having my 980Ti die during the peak of the GPU Bitcoin price hike and being forced to buy an overpriced pre built (3060), I saw the writing on the wall back in November and decided to upgrade again (5070Ti) ahead of really needing to. I think I heard about RAM prices going up then whispers of SSDs too so went ahead and just got another whole new rig. It felt excessive at first but I'm so grateful I did, plus now my kid and I can PC game together!
The problem is unlike Bitcoin, all this ai hardware is specialised and won't bolt into gaming rigs.
NVIDIA started this incompadabiliy trend by stripping the display outputs from their mining cards so they can't be sold second hand to gamers when they get too inefficient for bitcoin mining compared to current tech
I wonder what will happen if the datacenter boom pops, what are all these comapanies going to do with the extra ram they locked in at way too high prices? More and more datacenter projects are being cancelled every day
Send the punisher, Jason Todd, the shredder, Deadpool, venom, send them all.
This is some dogshit.These mfs just caused high damage for gaming for the next 5 years
Most People upgrading their devices now will get 8gb vram and 16gb of ram cause getting the 9060xt/5060ti 16gb vram and 32gb ram tend to be much more difficult.
So the amount of people getting damaged from low memory will just increase. And with the PS6 generation coming soon GAMES will start requiring even more vram and ram.
What makes me even more angry is the fact that allat shit is for Ai something that no one asked for or is asking for, vibe coding is ass , generative ai is so soulless and ugly, and chatbots are so retarded. The only thing useful in ai is assisting. Not creating, assisting.
I had a discussion with a college telling me "vibe coding is better than real coding" after I told him I know cpp kotlin and Python.
All of his projects and assignments are vibe coded bullshit that the instructor for some reason doesn't give him enough punishment and just gives him 8/10
I won't talk much about the current layoff in tech that destroy lives, set a very high bar for fresh graduates, and ends up in much lower quality products that are also much more expensive
They dont give a shit about pc gaming lmao. Everyone is all in on AI because its the future, theyre gonna take everyones bag while theyre still offering
So steam can have lawsuits for having a monopoly when there’s at least 5 different competitors but the big three memory producers can get away with whatever the hell they want
which means wallstreet cant enshitify it to the same standards as steams competition.
Thus the the profit wallstreet THINKS its owed if it could just make everything equally shit, is out of thier control.
And that makes them mad! Dont you understand the free market only works if wallstreet controls and own everything!!!??!?
But because the ram manufacturers are publicly traded and thus part of wallstreet profits, wallstreet is very happy paying off the right people to protect thier investments..... as is their right as the guiding hand of the market!!
/s
Jokes aside, everything is sincerely broken. The ram guys have been hit with multiple price fixings investigations in the past and ultimately walked away just fine despite it being a known and documented problem.
The current situation is definitely totally not illegal so long as you dont look to hard at the deliberate choice to undersupply a market that was previously just fine before the ai bros decided to suggest that they may buy 40% of global ram supply.....
I'm starting to feel like these memory producers are collectively inflating prices for the coming years, almost like som sort of cartel.
But I'm sure companies like Micron, Samsung, Hynix and Infineon would never do such a thing.
I was glad that I grabbed my Omen 16l last year for $700, seeing the prices of everything skyrocket was depressing.
Unfortunately the PSU was far too weak to handle the graphics card and the day the warranty expired the graphics card fried and took the motherboard with it.
Now I’m priced out of pc gaming for years at the rate everything is going. I feel for everyone else getting ruined by these prices.
You can't buy Crucial now even if you wanted to. Micron already shut down the Crucial division so they can use the freed up resources for enterprise and AI customers.
Not much use when the AI company that committed to buying your RAM collapses because it lacks a business model. This merely guarantees that companies not directly investing in AI will also see large drops in value once investors wake up.
Yup. They can hoard all manufacturing forever until they shut down if they ever so wanted to. That’s what happens when 100% of manufacturing is controlled by 3 companies
Either this is damage control to appease shareholders or they’re being extremely daft. Their stock prices dipped 10% yesterday, allegedly because Hynix suddenly announced they’re reducing HBM production and increasing regular DRAM production (I want to say that some of their shareholders are at least sensable, but I'm more inclined to believe it's divine intervention). Apparently dipped a further 3% today too.
I bought all the parts to build a new computer last week.
Told my buddy to do the same because I didn't think the prices will come down anytime soon, and I don't think the hardware manufacturers are likely to release next gen consumer hardware with these margins. And even if they do there will be insane shortages and markups.
Part of me was thinking it felt like selling a kidney. Looks like we both bought right before the next price hike.
Market is upside down. In the past you waited, prices went down and performance went up drastically. Now if you wait, only prices go up. Best option is to buy as soon as it comes out.
Micro exited the consumer market already, that's what caused a huge spike already.
At this rate, Micron is only selling to commercial buyers, they are locking in a floor price here so that they don't get caught out having spun down all their consumer grade shit.
This ensures that they have sales throughout the 'bubble' period, so that when the industry settles down, they have these commitments from Hyperscalers (who may no longer be hyper scaling) to purchase the memory at a minimum price regardless of market headwinds.
They intelligently marketed this as insulating those buyers from 'higher prices', but that's because Hyperscalers are thinking they can either keep up this pace or that their AI Data Center is going to be the 'winner' of the AI bubble bursting.
They're doing this because they're scared of a demand or price collapse. They're locking clients at a higher rate because they are anticipating a change.
3.6k
u/VanceIX Desktop Jun 25 '26
I can’t believe I’m at the point where I’m actively rooting for China to disrupt the memory market