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torginus 6 hours ago

Am I wrong that essentially what OpenAI tried to do is to short squeeze the memory market?

What happens if they decide to dump all the stock they don't actually need anymore?

Will half the memory industry run into the ground because of the oversupply means their current production is unsellable?

pjc50 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The term I would use is "corner", as in "silver" and "onions". But there's a couple of distinctions:

- supposedly buying for their own use, rather than reselling

- bought as forward, rather than spot: much of what they've ""bought"" is a commitment to buy memory that has not yet been manufactured

> Will half the memory industry run into the ground because of the oversupply means their current production is unsellable?

They've seen that coming, this is why there isn't a massive expansion to meet the demand rise and instead they're letting "demand destruction" happen. A decision vindicated by the war, as well.

torginus 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> supposedly buying for their own use, rather than reselling?

Do we know what they're using it for? I mean not reselling would imply the chips go on some OpenAI specific proprietary hardware directly, rather than it being sold back to OEMs to buy more GPUs or other off the shelf accelerators.

> They've seen that coming, this is why there isn't a massive expansion to meet the demand rise and instead they're letting "demand destruction" happen. A decision vindicated by the war, as well.

If you're a memory company, this sounds like making the best of a bad situation. not making more stuff despite demand far outstripping supply, just to prepare for the potential oversupply your customer can cause because they can walk back on their massive order.

HWR_14 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I thought they were buying it more to keep it out of the hands of their competitors than any other reason.