Memory expert suspects RAM price drop in 2027'H2 due to china heavy investments
Posted by Terminator857@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 56 comments
Quote: ..., the former executive remarked that Chinese companies are investing aggressively to boost their memory chip production. According to him, if these investments are successful and lead to an increase in output, then the surge in supply could cause prices to fall a year from now in the second half of next year. https://wccftech.com/ex-samsung-chip-boss-says-chinas-dram-blitz-could-crush-the-414-ddr5-price-spike-within-a-year/
From google AI: https://www.google.com/search?q=CXMT+capital+expenditure Quote:
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) had a massive Q1 2026 profit surge of 1,688%, the company is investing in HBM packaging and advanced DDR5, aiming to increase capacity from \~280,000 to over 300,000 wafers per month. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Key Capital Expenditure and Expansion Details (2025-2026)
- Expansion Funding: CXMT is using funds from a planned $4.2 billion Shanghai IPO to fund expansion.
- Investment Focus: Proceeds are allocated towards phase II wafer fabrication, technical upgrades, and next-generation R&D.
- Production Growth: The company is expanding capacity to 300,000+ wafers per month to support the AI-driven "memory chaos" demand.
- HBM Development: CXMT is investing in HBM back-end packaging in Shanghai, aiming for 30,000 wafers per month in initial HBM capacity by late 2026.
Etroarl55@reddit
Not how geopolitics would work though, they would simply get tariffed and pseudo banned on NA markets.
mvhsbball22@reddit
But it's a global market, so if Europe and Asia buy these chips, they won't need to buy US chips, and they will remain on the market. I don't know enough to know whether this is enough of a change to push prices down, but NA tariffs won't necessarily keep worldwide prices high.
fallingdowndizzyvr@reddit
By the same token then, isn't the Nvidia ban a retaliatory ban for the US banning Huawei anything from being sold in the US. Since that Nvidia ban primarily helps Huawei.
silenceimpaired@reddit
2027 post title by OP: Memory Expert didn’t account for World War III.
pwnrzero@reddit
This is what I'm waiting for. AI bubble implodes and prices collapses due to influx of cheap memory, or investors finally realize it's a bubble when an AI IPO hits the public market.
Or China invades Taiwan and the bubble implodes as memory skyrockets from its current 5x skyhigh prices to 50x.
Mashic@reddit
And if data centers are not being built, me might also see ram reallocated to consumers.
Due_Duck_8472@reddit
The consumer market is dying - compute is going to the cloud and hardware for consumers will be very very basic going forward. The PC marker will die and everyone will be using subscription based portal devices controlled by a few tech companies.
The local paradigm is ending.
fallingdowndizzyvr@reddit
No. You won't. Since the RAM they make for data center servers is not the RAM consumers use.
tinny66666@reddit
They still use the same wafers and process. If data centers are not being built of course they will shift production to consumer RAM.
Mashic@reddit
But they can repurpose it for a small cost, can't they?
Miriel_z@reddit
This was expected somewhat, Chinese RAM will flood the market and satisfy our demand eventually. Once the niche is filled, the traitors like Micron should not complain about unfair competition.
Dry_Yam_4597@reddit
I cant believe how the west just keeps shooting itself in the foot by allowing monopolies and grift to control the markets for more than just computer tech. China is marching on with open sourcing models, investing in energy sources, expanding hardware manufacturing while we sit here on our hands hoping we dont return to the 1930s, and praying that shortages in almost everything we consume will hopefully go away on their own. Pathetic. This should have been a time of booming investment in chip manufacturing, energy and all sorts of the things that are scarce (ie cars, medical supplies, food, and so on).
Miriel_z@reddit
No one cares about long-term performance or even the country. All they care is getting rich NOW. We do not forget, we will not forgive.
DonkeyBonked@reddit
I will never forget how OpenAI began the RAMpocolypse or Micron's "fuck those who made us" approach, or Samsung or Sy Hynix.
I will not take pity on a single one of them when China steals their tech and cheapens it for the world to undercut them.
These are companies who screwed the entire world's economy "because they could" exploiting a demand to a level that it is destroying brands and changing the computing world in insane ways, pricing any but the rich out of so much as a fucking modern gaming card which only the rich could even justify spending that kind of fucking money now on a gaming component.
There is not a single one of these companies I will ever feel bad for anything that happens to them. I hope they are undercut to the point where their funding can never be recovered.
blakezilla@reddit
What do you think would have happened if these manufacturers kept prices static in the face of massively increased demand? They are also increasing production as quickly as possible to take advantage of the higher prices the market is bearing. It’s literally how capitalism works. I am not sure how charging the market price for a good is “fuck those who made us.” If you don’t do that then suddenly there just isn’t a market at all anymore. Someone with enough capital to buy your entire inventory in bulk will do ao and go ahead and charge the true market rate. It’s a guaranteed return. Please enlighten us on how you solve this economic problem so that everyone is happy and satisfied and gets to buy these goods at a price point that works for them.
jazir55@reddit
TSMC has commited hundreds of billions to building new fabs in the US (Arizona), as are Samsung and Intel. It is categorically false to say the US is not investing in domestic chip production.
1000% correct on a state and federal utility level, i'm baffled they're approving data centers without a requirement for the companies building them to supply the energy. Should come with a requirement/stipulation that they build the equivalent amount of solar/wind/geothermal/hydro/whatever to fully power their own data centers without sucking energy away from the public and massively skyrocketing costs. Should be laying out solar panels across thousands of square miles of desert, we have a shitload of spare space.
The US gave all of our manufacturing away to China when Nixon opened up China to global trade. Domestic manufacturing in the US at this point is an idealistic dream which will never, ever occur with humans, it will be brought back with automated robots (Tesla, Figure, Boston Dynamics, etc). They will be much slower to roll out than the Chinese ones that are already in use in dark factories.
Booming in China, should be booming in the US (but isn't). Frankly we'd be where we are now 10-15 years ago tech wise if Gore had won in 2000 and that $7 TRILLION dollars wasn't spent on the """war on terror""" and instead directly injected into the sciences.
More-Curious816@reddit
the keyword here is committed not actually spent. same like apple $600b, meta $600b, softbank $500b, amazon $340b, at&t $250b, all are just illusion not actually going to be directly invested, slso the plan is multi year plan not in a single year and these just so they gain a favor, get the media buzz and talk and to mitigate tariffs.
rumblemcskurmish@reddit
Capitalism works whether you believe in it or not. Even the communists are responding to market incentives
Vikare_Mandzukic@reddit
Just to add to that, Marx saw Capitalism as a necessary and highly efficient tool for developing the Means of Production, the Market it's the worst of masters and the best of servants.
China is following Marx and Engels to the letter.
Imaginary-Unit-3267@reddit
They're not communists. They just call themselves that. And no, free markets work. Markets != capitalism. Research the history of the word "capitalism" - it was coined by socialists, and it doesn't mean what you think it means. The thing you like is free markets, which are a different beast altogether, which the powers that be love for you to mistakenly believe are the same thing.
paloaltothrowaway@reddit
Traitors like micron?
kmouratidis@reddit
https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-announces-exit-crucial-consumer-business
paloaltothrowaway@reddit
Yeah hobbyists aren’t strategic customers for micron.
More-Curious816@reddit
sooner or later they will crawl back for the average users, simply because that how greed work and everyone and their mothers trying to secure a piece of that corporations money, eventually more supplies will flood the market, some cheaper and more power efficient, then micron and NVIDIA need to refocus on the user market again to stop the money bleed. you think these corporations have loyalty to them? they will ditch them as soon as a working cheaper alternative enter the market.
paloaltothrowaway@reddit
What loyalty?
Micron is charging maximum price to their enterprise customers. They would ditch micron as soon as they could.
Sure the market will come back down to earth a few years from now. In the meantime micron will have collected tens or hundred billions dollars more than they would have if they had allocated their manufacturing capacity to “the average users”
More-Curious816@reddit
exactly. if they don't have loyalty to users, why corporations would be loyal to them? it's how greed work. no honor among greedy bastards where money is all they care about. also that money they hoard hopefully benefit them, because if the market get more manufacturers, why the average customer would pay from micron instead of from the new alternative? they are keep shooting themselves in the foot like any other out of touch big corporations and keep asking why the average users not loyal to our brands?
paloaltothrowaway@reddit
You don’t seem to get it that micron couldn’t give less fuck if they lost business from regular users forever.
More-Curious816@reddit
i get it, they do that because the datacenters give them the the blank check. but what I was talking about is, what if, more companies entered the line and start making ram? these datacenters will not keep paying the premium prices, basically micron loss both sides. sure, they don't care now, but when the demands from datacenters nearly vanish, they are bound to crawl back or close the business, it's economy 101.
a_beautiful_rhind@reddit
There's a finite supply of wafers. They used them for the most expensive thing.
CXMT is also investing in HBM per op.
lurenjia_3x@reddit
I'm skeptical about this report. It looks like a play to shake up the stock market rather than real mass production.
DDR5 requires EUV, which is exactly what China lacks. They have to rely on DUV multi-patterning, but that means terrible yields and high power consumption. The final output will probably only be enough to support their domestic enterprise market.
Guinness@reddit
Here’s hoping. We desperately need high bandwidth VRAM. Ideally HBM.
More-Curious816@reddit
we won't get HBM any time soon, believe me, the manufacturing is just expensive. hopefully ddr6 and lpddr6 soon flood the market though. it's double the speed of last generation, close to triple if you yse the overclocked high end version.
Vancecookcobain@reddit
I don't see it. Companies are going to continue squeezing AI uses to extract as much per token as possible. Folks are going to be irritated and try to scoop up as much ram for local AIs as a response and the situation isnt going to materially improve for consumers imo....totally open to being wrong but unless there is some materialization of a huge manufacturing push to overcome demand I don't see it happening
deleted-account69420@reddit
Hope for the present is that they want to leverage that to gain the market favours.
Even then, they not going to be able to get enough fabs online to do that this year.
And they have to supply the whole Chinese market, before we consider anything getting here.
no-name-here@reddit
> they have to supply the whole Chinese market, before we consider anything getting here.
No, because even if their chips only go to China, it's less chips that the existing manufacturers can sell there, driving down prices outside China.
phido3000@reddit
By 2027 we will be in a full AI war.
China is likely to supply China and its er, interest. US like likely to supply US and its interests.
However, AI seems to be heading for more speed than just raw capacity.
Vancecookcobain@reddit
Exactly which is why I think that the prices arent coming down anytime soon if ever
PigSlam@reddit
Production will increase, and prices will go down, or economics have fundamentally changed forever within the last year, and every historical pattern is just history.
Vancecookcobain@reddit
Who has the capability to increase production to alleviate prices right now?? Most of the AI grade ram being produced on the planet is already bought up through nearly the end of the decade.
This just simply isn't true.
Mochila-Mochila@reddit
It's not right now, it's in 2 years. And it'll come from PRC manufacturers. That's the entire point of OP's post.
westsunset@reddit
Correct. There's a lot of wishful thinking without fact. People seem to think you can whip up a fab out of thin air. Even base components like pcbs are under enormous pressure
Vancecookcobain@reddit
There is a pretty strong sentiment here that AI grade ram is just something that comes out of a microwave lol.
I don't get it but it seems that us pointing out how the prices aren't coming down any time soon is rubbing people the wrong way. If the logistics and material concerns were something that could be easily overcome they would have easily done so. The problem though is we are dealing with a nearly insatiable thirst of a commodity that is very sophisticated and requires a very sophisticated pipeline that is going to take years to scale
westsunset@reddit
Also that demand is robbing from lower grade components. Even if all the AI demand stopped tomorrow it would take long time for all the resources to stabilize. And the reality is most firms have not even begun to adopt AI. The real demand has not even picked up.
thread-e-printing@reddit
People who larp around in game spaces such as the securities market are basically constitutionally incapable of understanding materialism and are useless when their credit cards stop working
ProfessionalJackals@reddit
Vancecookcobain@reddit
Yup a lot of what you said is true. Have you heard of Jevon's paradox though?
If in a year or two all you need is around 32-64gb to run what we consider frontier levels of inference....the price would skyrocket because EVERYONE would try to get the ram to avoid having to pay 200 dollars a month to OpenAI and Anthropic or Google.
So regardless of what happens I don't see how the price issue can be resolved in 2027
fantasticsid@reddit
Everyone in this sub would. None of the nontechnical LLM enjoyers I know would even have the first clue where to start.
Vancecookcobain@reddit
Is LMstudio that hard to learn?
PigSlam@reddit
Is there an affordable 64gb card available on this planet? Maybe the B70 or R9070 Pro AI might qualify, but they’re 32GB GPUs that cost more than the average laptop, and aren’t any better at gaming than cards at half the price.
ProfessionalJackals@reddit
Future GPUs will have more memory to satisfy the market. Look, if we can have a B70 for 1100 Euro, with 32GB, we can have 64GB cards for ... 1600 euro.
Especially if the memory prices drop again. Right now a lot is artificial constraint by companies like AMD/Nvidia not wanting to provide too much GPU memory as that cuts into their workstation cards too much.
Another factor is that we will see cards from China with larger memory. They already made it a sport to turn a 10GB 3060 to 20GB, or 24GB 4090 to 48GB, or ... and that is just the side market.
We are going to see actual AI cards for the general market from China at a much lower price then Nvidia etc... that is a 100% sure thing now with China development going in overdrive thanks to those restrictions.
Sabin_Stargem@reddit
Hopefully the artificial AI bubble would pop when RAM factories come online. I want to assemble my next PC at bargain bin prices.
khronyk@reddit
It would be amazing to see this destroying the ram cartel.... Imagine if the market collapsed or the ai bubble pops too
kant12@reddit
China saving the day yet again.
celsowm@reddit
My nintendo uncle said the same
TypicalPudding6190@reddit
I heard most of the manufacturers has pre orders for their next 2 to 5 years of production....
Inevitable_Ear132@reddit
Hopeful but 1.5+ years is a long time to wait on a single supplier coming online. Anyone planning 256+GB DDR5 builds today is already eating the 4x premium — bet is whether prices fall enough between now and then to make it cheaper to wait than to buy used server DDR4 in the meantime.