Even with AI pressure I'm willing to bet there's no need for prices to be this high. There has to be some price gouging/fixing going on. Same thing for nand and GPUs. Or else they're doing it to try to pressure people not to use local compute instead of the "cloud"

Memory manufacturers have gone through several cycles of lawsuits for market collusion at this point. It's gone from an open secret to just outright flaunting in our face.

Until the penalties involve actual jail time or a fine 10x larger than the profit they made from doing it, they couldn't care less.