Comment by mikae1
20 hours ago
Considering the insane memory price surge it's going to take years (or an eternity) before most people will consider upspecing their machines to run local over paying $20 per month to have the honor to loan a slice of Altman's hardware.
The only hope we have is the AI bubble bursting, but that will undoubtedly come with its own set of macroeconomic surprises.
The ~$1T/y AI capex isn't remotely sustainable. Memory fab capacity will go up, AI datacenter provisioning will go down, prices will become reasonable.
> Memory fab capacity will go up
The fabs are terrified to overscale in case the market collapses before the builds are complete.
> AI datacenter provisioning will go down
Depends on political opposition at both local and national levels. Hard to predict the future, which feeds into the previous point.
What is it with fabs where there is just no competition springing up outside the existing memory cartels? Is the knowledge of how to build and run a fab strictly controlled by these companies? Is all qualified talent just immediately poached and put behind NDA and noncompetes? It just makes no sense. Capitalism would suggest these conditions with so much unstable equilibrium in this market would see increase in supply to take advantage of the pricing. The fact that this isn't playing out as such suggests there are some very powerful thumbs on the scale of this "free" market.
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