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Crucial is shutting down — because Micron wants to sell its RAM and SSDs to AI companies instead
(www.theverge.com)
Oh man
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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AI was never meant to benefit the working class in any capacity.
Its a great rule of thumb that if you see oligarchs hype up something and push for it to be everywhere, its a BAD fucking thing.
Meanwhile the average CEOs decision making could be replaced by a goldfish in a tank with some arbitrary object detection code.
Resource drain of LLMs inescapably makes them tools availiable only to big players. They are ideal in the way they are naturally gated. Making them mandatory == giving these select companies and people power over everything. And not only oligarchs' promotion, but the whole situation of them being given for free or cheap at a huge loss gives one an idea that there's a lot to milk from it's growing adoption.
But that's completely not true! Like, not a single thing you said is even slightly correct!
LLMs are relatively cheap to run - at small scales. You can run an LLM on your own computer right now. It won't be super fast, it won't have super skills, but you can run it, and you can train it yourself.
Massive LLMs like ChatGPT require tremendous resources precisely because they are not just tools available only to big players. Everybody on the planet has access to them - for free. The only actual difference there is between running an LLM locally and through a provider is that you get better speed and (sometimes, depending on context) better training through a provider.
As for "there's a lot to milk from its growing adoption" - maybe? Probably? Who knows? That's the "magic" of the AI bubble we're experiencing right now - the big players keep saying that it will "make work and money obsolete", that "anyone will be able to do anything", that "a time of post-scarcity approaches", and a billion other bullshit marketing slogans like that. But the reality is that nobody has yet figured out how to make money on that thing.
Right now, the only reason it's "growing", is because of the weird and probably illegal circular financing that's going on at the very top - Nvidia invests in OpenAI, which invests in Oracle, which invests in Nvidia - and so on. No money is actually being made or (often) even changing hands, but everyone can now show they've received a lot of investment which pumps up their stock prices. The only reason this hasn't popped yet is probably because the main investing parties are using tonnes of cash they had stored.
Growing adoption means nothing. It's a marketing tool for them to keep shareholders happy while they keep a literal investing circlejerk going, every now and again inviting another player into the fold.
I knew there was something wrong when we started getting positive metrics based on how much we leveraged AI.
this seems incredibly short sighted... the current situation exists because there is a large amount of infrastructure and data centres being built. once that infrastructure is built, the demand will return to normal... OR once the bubble bursts, the market will be flooded with used ram from failed data centres..... aliexpress will be selling ram at a dollar a gig when all these data centres flop
The only people who believe in infinite growth in a finite world are mad men and economists.
But you repeat yourself.
I don’t think the bubble will burst like we are used to. AI is part of the arms race between nations. So they will shore the industry up at all costs.
As for the choice to shut down the brand. It will be years before all that infra gets built. Better to sit the time out and revive the brand when prices are reasonable enough that hobbyists and such are willing to pay them.
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So their not shutting down, just focusing on AI idiots until the bubble busts and then they will turn back to consumers.......
Rules of Acquisition #1,261-- Always fuck over the idiots in the market. And when you've taken all their money, go back to your base with inflated prices.
And with the AI bullshit, I’m reminded of Rule of Acquisition #82: The flimsier the product, the higher the price.
I just installed a 4TB nvme Crucial SSD in my new build solely to put games on.
I'm sure they will come crawling back to consumers after the AI bubble bursts.
Same here... I'm so glad I upgraded when I did... I did a panic upgrade last December.. just look into a better GPU now
Shits wild the same ram I bought over a year ago is 400% more for half the amount of GB.
Business don't care about consumers because nowadays business sell to other business
Nowadays? It's always been the case. It's far easier and less hassle to sell to or work for other businesses. I run an IT service company and I avoid residential work line the plague. It can sometimes make me more money, but over all it is horrible as opposed to work done for other companies.
I've talked with people in HVAC who have said the same. It's much easier to provide a service to a business than random individuals.
However, this is different, as this is just a retail product. Micron doesn't have to deal with the person who doesn't pay after the job is done, or doesn't lock their dog up because "he doesn't bite, it will be fine" and it turns out to be an aggressive monster. This is just assembly line production that they already are set up to do.
I get that they have a limited number of inputs and they are just choosing to make as much money as possible. It sucks to see that go, though. Crucial has always been my go-to for RAM.
Well if you think about it this way there's also less packaging involving b2b. You don't have to sell to a middleman who then will resell it. You can just sell at the higher price point to start with and you can have a whole lot less packaging involved and then just provide it straight out to the company. You also selling both which gets you a larger amount at once so rather than having to stockpile and everything like that. There's a whole lot of other factors that go in selling B2B for even a retail company as opposed to selling retail.
Translation, Micron is shutting down Crucial for short term shareholder value at the cost of a sustainable and proven long term brand and channel.
It’s not just for shareholder value, like a downsize or stock buyback would achieve. This will literally fill their coffers to the brim faster than staying in the consumer market. Also the consumer market won’t go away anytime soon and there are very few competitors to begin with. They can just return to the consumer market once the AI bubble has burst like nothing has changed. Only difference is they will have way more money in the bank than if they never left.
Ask Intel how well compromising long term product development for short term gain is working now. How is their bank balance looking now?
You also cant just pick it up from scratch again. The people are gone, the relationships are gone and people who trusted your brand to build their businesses have gone elsewhere.
I swear businesses are run like political parties these days, they simply dont care about anything beyond the next cycle.
They will return to the market with a new brand once the bubble bursts.
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I built a god rig in 2022, i bought the best 64gb ddr5 4-stick ram kit i could, an nvidia 4090, the best processor i could, and attached it to the best mobo i could.
I spent about 4800.
My pc is now worth about 6500.
This is some crazy ass shit. Never should a pc appreciate in value.
What the hell is going on?????
Your point still stands, but don't forget basic inflation. $4,800 in 2022 is like > $5,300 now.
When you hear people say they hate AI, it's for more reasons than AI slop, energy consumption, and beating the damn term into every product line you can imagine for little to no benefit.
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AI is really ruining fucking everything. The enviorment, entertainement, music, art, jobs, reality, freedom / privacy / rights.
Haven't seen it put any more concisely. It's true though. I really really hope some AI bubble pops soon...
No, corporate greed is ruining everything with AI.
Because you know if they built a super-AI that give them perfect instructions on how to build Earth into a paradise, but it would require they give up 1/4 of their wealth, they'd be reaching for the reset button before it finished printing them out...
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