I think everyone is aware now that you don't build a fab by snapping your fingers, and you need to amortise it over many years. The said manufacturers are just out of a massive slump in demand during covid, when they were selling at a loss, and these cycles happened many times in this industry. It is understandable that they don't jump all-in on the AI bandwagon, which, god knows where it is going and for how long.

If you want evidence that no one predicted this, look at WD. They disinvested from sandisk up to early this year. Now sandisk is worth more than WD. Doesn't seem consistent with a concerted strategy to gauge prices.

> You can absolutely price fix/manufacture a shortage. Ever heard of merchants setting fire to crops after hoarding to sell at a higher price?

Fine. Show me which manufacturer is cutting production to corner the market. I don't see that.

Yes when there are large fixed costs to expanding production, that will happen more slowly, after determining that the high demand isn't just a short term spike.

It's not like wheat, where you just can just plant more at marginal cost (I'm sure someone in farming will now explain why that isn't exactly true either).

I feel like I and HN live in different worlds,

https://www.blocksandfiles.com/ai-ml/2026/01/20/samsung-sk-h...

Big manufactures have absolutely cut production of lower margin products and it's not like they can re-purpose all of the equipment used for it for HBM yet. edit They can definitely focus more resource because of it on HBM though.

Things have improved a bit since govts are starting to get angry.

Tldr; no one is cutting the production of high margin stuff, but low margin stuff can go and die, because it's not a free market it's a stock market these companies want to show off better margins in every unit there is no reason to keep inefficient things running when not doing it pays more.

They just don't want 30-40% margins anymore. That is not free market that is quite literally serving their own interests because they know there is a monopoly.

All big memory manufacturers are heavily supported by the govt, that's what has made them the monopolies they are Micron supported by USA (they crushed Japan's memory industry for it), and Korean giants are more tangled up with the govt than well most people in US would realize.

Somehow people think free market means anything goes, which honestly is where we stand today so I don't blame anyone.

But using govts to crush competitions and build yourself up on subsidies and similar isn't really free markets. China hasn't been able to grow a significant memory chip industry yet because of lack of EUV machines and similar technologies blocked by the US, which is also not "free market".

As for WD, and Sandisk separating I feel like this was more mutual and they new HDDs or SSDs being together was a distraction for both. Which feels more strategic, think of it like this, the shareholders who had the shares how hold shares in both and together they might have likely been worth less so shareholders made money.

Aka good for free market. I don't see how that relates to the actual memory crunch issue more broadly.