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Back to The hidden supply chain costs of the AI boom, with Willy Shih.

Why Is the AI Boom Making RAM More Expensive?

Willy Shih says the AI boom is making RAM more expensive because demand for memory chips has run far ahead of what the factories can produce. That is a different break from a tariff or a blocked shipping lane, where the market can reroute the goods. Here the capacity is simply not there.

He used to buy memory cards on Black Friday. He is not doing that this year. He is glad he stocked up on an earlier Black Friday. The amounts of memory involved are huge, and the price jump is already something a buyer can see.

Nilay Patel's picture of the same squeeze is a game console. If Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out and people go to buy a PlayStation 5, the console can cost more late in its life than it did at the start, because the price of memory has skyrocketed. The supply point is Shih's: when one industry takes the RAM, phones and the other products that need the same chips get more expensive.

Transcript

The hidden supply chain costs of the AI boom ·

Decoder with Nilay Patel

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