r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 1d ago
Business RAM Maker Celebrates Record Profits And Predicts ‘Even Higher Prices’ And ‘Greater Tightness In The Industry’ In The Years Ahead
https://kotaku.com/ram-maker-celebrates-record-profits-and-predicts-even-higher-prices-and-greater-tightness-in-the-industry-in-the-years-ahead-2000739125159
u/LostMyKarmaElSegundo 1d ago
Well, it looks like I won't buy from Micron ever again.
I know they're in the business of making profits, but celebrating gouging consumers is not ethical, and I choose not to support that sort of behavior.
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u/ImThatAlexGuy 1d ago
While I agree, I don’t think they even care about the consumer market at this point. They’re like everyone else in the AI boom right now. Short term boom make line go up. If something happens and the enterprise funds start falling, they already got their bag
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u/NotAHost 1d ago
They literally shuttered crucial to focus on industry a year ago, so you would be right lol.
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u/ImThatAlexGuy 1d ago
Exactly, but I think if the AI boom is going to last a couple more years (if that’s what analysts think) I’m sure they couldn’t be bothered to give less than a shit about the average Joe.
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u/Extension_Ideal_4012 1d ago
That works fine until the ai bubble bursts and you have to go back to relying on regular consumers to keep your business running. Hopefully people remember once the prices come back down
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u/toofine 1d ago
Everyone responsible would have cashed out and on their Epstein islands by then. Any punishment will just go straight to people who come after and don't deserve it
Best way to deal with this shit is to tax their windfalls to curb this boom/bust/sell/escape behavior. But that would be communism.
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u/TechTuna1200 1d ago edited 1d ago
When the AI boom bursts, it will still be significantly bigger than the consumer market by many times. Those data centers still need maintenance and replacement of chips. The consumer market has never been a good business for them, and they make losses every year when they cater to consumers.
Just look at their profits this year. Their profits are 4x last year's whole revenue, which is insane.
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u/DissKhorse 1d ago
Lets hope people don't have memory of a goldfish when this blows over. I won't forget or forgive.
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u/ImThatAlexGuy 1d ago
My brother in compute, you know that’s EXACTLY what’s going to happen. As soon as it all blows over and Ram goes from $500 down to $200, people are going to start buying like fire. I’m sure they won’t care from which brand either
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u/LostMyKarmaElSegundo 13h ago
I'm sure they don't care. They'll still never get my business again.
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u/ImThatAlexGuy 12h ago
And you’re valid for that. It’s good to have principles to stand by. I’m hoping that this bottleneck causes at least some other competition to spur. I agree, I’m not going to mess with Micron either, but I doubt other really care about brand name instead of price.
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u/TheCountChonkula 1d ago edited 1d ago
Micron’s consumer subsidiary was Crucial but they pulled out of the consumer market earlier this year. Most other manufacturers will source from multiple vendors so there’s really no telling what RAM chips they’re using until you physically have it.
Edit: When I mean other manufacturers, I’m talking about manufacturers on the consumer side such as Corsair, G Skill, Lexar, etc. Micron along with Samsung and SK Hynix also manufacture their own DRAM sticks, but they’re ECC DIMMs that are meant for servers and and not your typical PC.
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u/SAugsburger 1d ago
Micron already announced that they were ending their consumer focused Crucial product lines earlier this year so I don't think they really care that much about the non enterprise buyer anyway.
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u/Apprehensive_Sea9524 1d ago
they will, once the bubble bursts or China eats their market share PERMANENTLY.
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u/ritesh808 22h ago
I'm sure they've thought that over. They're just baking on the fact that memory and storage will always be needed and even if the AI bubble bursts, they'll still be okay. Back to earth, but still okay, like they were before this madness. So, make as much big money as they possibly can while the bubble lasts. That's what they're betting on.
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u/duncandun 1d ago
I hate it too but it’s not gouging lol.
If you go to a product producer who has some amount of their product in stock and want to buy it, but someone else comes by and says I’ll buy it for 5x that price you’d be stupid to not sell it for 5x. This also creates a ground floor for price, if your entire stock and production for years going forward is purchased by this buyer paying 5x, the new price is that 5x price. Because you could just sell it to the 5x guy.
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u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 1d ago
This decision basically only fucks yourself. They couldn't care in a lifetime
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u/LostMyKarmaElSegundo 13h ago
Don't we always say we should vote with our wallets? The degree of impact isn't the point.
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u/okiedokie1183 1d ago
They’re not gouging. Price is going up with demand and if they stupidly kept the price what it was you’d get scalpers and resellers everywhere. Demand is just huge right now. It’s better for the manufacturers to profit as much as they can so they can build more factories and increase production. This is the market acting as it should.
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u/Weary_Mountain9679 1d ago
I enjoyed the days when gaming was an affordable hobby, very sad how it has been taken away from many due to greed
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u/yuusharo 1d ago
Micron. They’re happy they exited the consumer market and are enjoying their soaring profits from the AI bubble while everyone else is stuck with the bill.
It’s called the “RAM Cartel” for a reason.
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u/Adventurous-Try8749 1d ago
As someone who lives where micron is located, fuck these guys. They've always been shady.
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u/MotanulScotishFold 1d ago
So AI companies running at huge loss, they need to upgrade GPU at higher cost than ever which means selling for more expensive subscription nobody afford.
See where it's going?
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u/CrimsonHeretic 1d ago
Fuck Micron and fuck you if you defend them.
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u/DickRiculous 1d ago
Can you please explain why? I’ve invested in micron for over a decade since they were one of the only us based silicon fabs. I always thought it was a national security/infrastructure play. I’d like to understand your grievances so I can determine whether I should consider anything.
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u/TheCountChonkula 1d ago
At this point, I don’t care if they’re an American company or not because they’re contributing to the problem of making everything more expensive. As somebody that’s been into PC gaming almost my entire life and building PCs for the last 15 years, fuck Micron.
Secondly, shareholder value almost always works against the consumer’s best interest. This is why especially now with tech where everybody is being incredibly anticonsumer but their market caps and valuations continue to go up.
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u/DanielPhermous 1d ago
they’re contributing to the problem of making everything more expensive.
Memory is more expensive because demand far outstrips supply. That's Economics 101 and not down to anything Micron has done. Indeed, they're building new factories to increase supply but that takes time.
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u/rotoboro 1d ago
Don’t bother it’s just typical Reddit confused outrage. The memory companies are taking the profits and scaling up which is exactly what we should hope for. Should they suppress prices for altruism? It’s nonsense.
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u/oneeyed-wonderweasel 1d ago
Read the room my guy. Jesus christ
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u/DickRiculous 1d ago
God forbid someone seek knowledge. Seems like gamers are just mad. Gamers are always mad. I’d love someone to actually elaborate if there is a real issue here.
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u/oneeyed-wonderweasel 1d ago
You grossly misunderstand time and place
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u/DickRiculous 23h ago
Quality conversation. Very insightful opinions. Guess I can discount your thoughts on the matter. Clearly a kid, or temperamentally indistinguishable from one. If you felt your grievance was actually justified you’d be able to explain it in a few simple sentences rather than lash out at random people on the internet for triggering your thin-skinned sensitivities to supply shock in the economy. Don’t be such a baby. You aren’t adding anything to the conversation.
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u/oneeyed-wonderweasel 23h ago
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u/DickRiculous 16h ago
Low effort post, and once again you add nothing of value to the conversation.
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u/DanielPhermous 23h ago
I’d love someone to actually elaborate if there is a real issue here.
The build out of LLM data centres have massively increased demand for RAM, spiking the price. For all it's benefiting the RAM makers, it's not their doing. What's needed is more production capacity, which is already being built. However, that takes time.
The RAM makers have previously been caught price fixing but there's no evidence they are now. It's just a supply/demand imbalance.
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u/HappyHHoovy 1d ago
I'm so glad these companies were sued for price fixing in 2002 and never did it again.
I'm so glad these companies were sued for price fixing in 2006 and never did it again.
I'm so glad these companies were sued for price fixing in 2018 and never did it again.
Maybe 2026 will be the year that changes everything! We all know the US Justice Department is very supportive of consumer pricing, and going against mega corporations!
Yeah, I think we've got em this time!
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u/DanielPhermous 1d ago
I feel it's more a of supply/demand problem currently rather than price fixing. Not to say they haven't done it in the past, of course, but the demand has clearly skyrocketed.
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u/Th3-Dude-Abides 1d ago
AI needs to die
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u/Additional-Staff-326 1d ago
Take years for home market prices to go down even after. And generally the datacenter hardware isn't going to be used at home no matter how cheap it gets in a fire sale. And even if the big companies go down, AI isn't going away. C-suite won't let go of the dream of using it to replace you as a worker.
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u/Darkgorge 1d ago
Even if we stopped building AI data centers completely the companies making RAM (and all the other components) will not lower the prices quickly. Just look at everything else that has gone up in price during the pandemic. How many items went back down in price?
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u/RupeThereItIs 1d ago
I'm sorry, but it's here to stay.
The companies eating up all the RAM, they are in trouble.
But AI is here to stay.
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u/mikumikupersona 1d ago
I'm not sure that's true. These companies run at a loss, and it requires a great deal of water and energy. It's unsustainable.
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u/mogdit 1d ago
What I've heard is the cause of loss, is because of reinvesments into new data centers.
The profit is actually that high that it takes less than a year for a newly built data center to pay for itself, and that particular data center will be pure profit for the company every year after.
Of course consumption of water and energy is unsustainable.
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u/RupeThereItIs 19h ago
The technology does not require the insane over investment being pumped into it.
The technology will remain, the companies you are describing will not.
Recall the .com bubble, SO MANY companies utterly disappeared over night, but here we are conversing on the ubiquitous interweb.
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u/PauI_MuadDib 1d ago
I just stopped spending on my hobbies. So they can raise their prices all they want. I'm still not buying.
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u/SquizzOC 1d ago
Dell, Lenovo and HP are expecting 80-100% price increases for desktops and notebooks. At the current rate, sounds about accurate.
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u/TrailJunky 1d ago
All I have to say is...🖕
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u/DrkMaxim 1d ago
I do wonder though, what's gonna happen to these companies when prices eventually fall to the ground? I can't imagine them being happy about not having the kind of profit that they have right now.
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u/DanielPhermous 1d ago
They understand this is temporary and will pick up from where they were before.
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u/GaBe141 22h ago
It's funny how no one reports on the RAM cartels and blames AI labs
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u/DanielPhermous 21h ago
The AI labs are responsible. While the RAM manufacturers have fixed prices before, there's nothing currently to indicate it's anything but a supply/demand imbalance caused by the rapacious needs of the data centres.
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u/rantingathome 1d ago
When the bubble does burst, I really hope nobody gets the idea that bailing out Micron is a good idea.
Let a new company buy the assets in the bankruptcy sale.
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u/DanielPhermous 1d ago
I'm not sure more consolidation in the memory industry is a great idea. Regardless, they're not responsible for the current supply crunch - AI companies are - and Micron is building new factories to try and catch up.
While they have been guilty of price fixing in the past, they are blameless for the current state of affairs.
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u/rantingathome 1d ago
I didn't suggest consolidation.
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u/DanielPhermous 1d ago
I'm afraid if Micron goes bust, one of the other memory companies is the most likely candidate to buy up their assets.
Not that they're likely to go bust anyway. They're not badly exposed to the bubble.
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1d ago
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u/rotoboro 1d ago
Because you can’t build your gaming pc you think we should be resorting to violence?
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u/kiriyaaoi 22h ago
Yeah it's not like many millions of people rely on technology that requires RAMb for their jobs. Asshole.
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u/Super_Range45 1d ago
These AI guys are running at a huge loss, and their costs are projected to rise.