🦔AI companies have pre-ordered almost all of the world's RAM production for 2027. Prices have climbed roughly 500% in 12 months, with a 64GB DDR5 kit jumping from $191 to over $1,100 and a 128GB kit going from $329 to $3,399. DRAM chips are now worth over half as much per kilogram as gold. PC and smartphone manufacturers are competing for whatever is left over, and SK Hynix's CEO warned that 2027 will be the worst year for memory supply in the industry's history. My Take The more expensive your device gets, the harder it is to own one powerful enough to do anything locally, and the more you depend on cloud services and subscriptions for everything. Gaming, storage, software, computing, all rented instead of owned. The companies buying up all the RAM are the same ones who'd love to sell you a subscription instead. The more your next laptop costs, the easier it is to talk you into renting everything from the cloud. The AI shortage didn't create that play, but it sure sped it up. Three companies control about 90% of global DRAM, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Samsung and Hynix have criminal convictions for fixing RAM prices in the early 2000s, paid about $485 million in fines between them, and executives did prison time. The industry-wide penalties topped $730 million. Micron was part of it but ratted everyone out and walked. Now a new class action alleges the same three used the AI shift as cover to cut consumer memory production and inflate prices. The case is unproven, but when companies with that track record are making two to three times the margin selling to AI data centers while you pay 500% more for the same product, "just supply and demand" is a tough sell. Hedgie🤗