Allegedly OpenAI Hoarding DDR5 Memory Creating Market Shortage
Reports suggest OpenAI has been aggressive in its purchasing strategies and may be causing the current battering of the worldwide memory market. The insider channel "Moore's Law Is Dead" claims that the AI firm is hoovering up available stocks of not only server-grade DRAM but also those of consumer DDR5 kits, including those for gaming.
Retail Sweeps and Supply Chain Effect
Allegedly, OpenAI employees are making physical purchases at retail locations to pull out as memory as possible. The reasoning seems to have been to acquire hardware resources directly while simultaneously limiting competitors' access to high-speed modules. The immediate effect of that is a squeezing of supply with an equally direct impact on the ordinary consumer.
The shortage of actual hardware now extends to various markets, including laptops, GPUs, and SSDs, with memory being one of their key ingredients. The market has reached the point that prices have inverted nowadays, one can find a gaming laptop equipped with RTX 4070 for less than a 64GB DDR5 kit from the likes of Corsair.
Concerns About Financial Paradox and the Market Situation
In light of this massive procurement, the liquidity of OpenAI must be put into question. The company has never declared a profit and, according to analyst estimations, will need some $400 billion over the next year to service its existing contractual obligations. And in spite of that need for liquidity, it has apparently been spunking money at whatever cost to secure memory.
Industry analysts interpret all this as a bad omen. A cash-hungry entity frenziedly hoarding resources, causing market distortion, has set off fears for some about an impending bursting of the AI market bubble.
