This story is hilarious.
OpenAI put in an order for 40% of the memory industry's output for 2026. They shuttered their consumer memory division and put all their factories on making memory for OpenAI.
However, oops, OpenAI was having trouble raising money. It turns out their "letter of intent to purchase" was non-binding. They backed out of the deal, and now the memory manufacturers are stuck with a bunch of memory they can't sell.
by Cornpop Sutton 
, A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Monday, March 30, 2026, 22:07 (17 hours, 57 minutes ago) @ FSK
The inflation of common memory devices has become fucking absurd. I bought a cheap assed bottom of the line Kingston SSD in 2018 for about $30 and the same product - no new generation, old technology - now sells for $100+.
Repackage the DRAM into SSDs and M.2 devices for consumers, price it reasonably and it will fly out of inventory.
One other element of the AI bust is dramatically increased fuel costs. These AI centers will make no sense at $200/bbl oil.
The issue is "memory for servers" and "memory for consumer devices" are completely different things. The memory manufacturers are screwed, because now they're stuck with inventory they can't sell. Regular customers are screwed, because the AI firms bid up prices and made a fake bid for memory.
They memory manufacturers can retool back to making memory for consumer devices, but I believe that has a switching cost.
by Cornpop Sutton , A bad bad dude who makes good shine., Tuesday, March 31, 2026, 01:49 (14 hours, 15 minutes ago) @ FSK
If there is a big enough inventory of the server grade chips it should be justifiable to create board level interface circuitry that adapts it to PC use. Generally it means stuff like more bits of ECC.
