memes

It's kinda worse since they didn't actually buy plain ram but basically all ingredients to making some. HBM also consumes far more resources per bit than let's say DDR5, so the resource allocation is way off. Good thing that these all end up in M$ storage facilities because data centers haven't been built because there isn't actually enough power to run them to make models for products which nobody wants. Truly the best efficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%93present_global_memory_supply_shortage

Edit: Over 50.000!

Actually that should be Sam Altman not NVIDIA.

And actually as someone else noted it's more like the raw constituent parts of DRAM have been bought up for the purposes of being assembled into a different kind of memory that will NEVER be able to be used on consumer systems. So lets say the AI bubble pops January 2027, there will be no glut of cheap DRAM, DRAM will remain very expensive due to a backlog of demand and time needed to shift production back to making DRAM. The HBM they make will either be sold at fire-sale prices to data centers, enterprises, etc leading to even more AI use but in different hands or less centralized or be bought up and destroyed or held to keep prices of even that sector high or at least not crashing entirely.

In the Simpsons example that guy is a scalper who is going to resell the tickets, you can get access to them, the tickets aren't being turned into something else, they still have the same function and utility, the price is just inflated. In our case the DRAM modules for consumer PCS simply won't be assembled, the key parts of them are being turned into different things entirely of no use or compatibility to consumers.

There is a real danger of a knock-on effect that it's not possible to produce the necessary DRAM for computers leading to other component sources shifting to AI/data center/enterprise production which leads to a complete collapse of the consumer PC market due to high prices, low availability, etc, etc, which proceeds to cause a shift to "cloud" computing under the ever-watchful surveillance eye where you own nothing and have to pay the various top tech companies a monthly fee to rent access.

This will also incentivize device makers including automakers to connect their devices and do the processing of most data on centralized services rather than shelling out for the 2GB of DRAM they'd previously put in the car or whatever the device is. Meaning less privacy, mandatory connected capability, more fees eventually passed onto the workers, better of the surveillance state. The interests of tech capitalists are now completely aligned with the surveillance state's interests for the first time in quite some time (previously there was at least some public friction and what surveillance they did was via backroom secret deals that meant evidence gathered couldn't be used in open court only by the intelligence community).