DRAM prices mooning will hurt everyone and might cause a consumer tech recession on its own in the next 12 months even without the AI bubble popping. Hyperscalers are going to jack up prices for cloud resources, electronics manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, etc.) will raise prices, this is gonna hurt.
Dec 15, 2025 at 5:41 AM
The Memory Crisis Explained
'That's not going to last': Jeff Bezos believes AI will force you to rent your PC from the cloud, and the RAM crisis is accelerating it
Your next PC upgrade might be a subscription
The AI boom is making the world’s cheapest smartphones disappear
AI data centers are driving demand for memory chips, pushing phone makers to raise prices and abandon some of their most affordable models.
Will expensive RAM change how we code?
Due to shortages, RAM is very expensive right now. And it will probably continue according to (somewhat optimistic) forecasts.
Electricity prices rising by double the rate of inflation. Data center demand means no relief ahead, analysts say
The impact of the AI industry on electricity prices has turned into a major political flashpoint ahead of the midterm elections this November.
Timing Is Everything in the AI Bubble
This week's tech sell-off is a symptom of a deeper problem: no one knows when - or how - big tech's $1 trillion bet on AI is going to pay off.
Hold on to Your Hardware
A warning about rising prices, vanishing consumer choice, and a future where owning a computer may matter more than ever as hardware, power, and control drift toward data centers and away from people.
‘Tidal wave’ of Pfas being launched to satisfy AI industry, campaigners warn
Big manufacturers planning to produce more of the forever chemicals to meet demand from datacentres
The chips are down for Moore’s law
The semiconductor industry will soon abandon its pursuit of Moore's law. Now things could get a lot more interesting.
GPU Pricing — Live Platform Rates | Vast.ai
Live GPU pricing on Vast.ai. Prices set by supply and demand across 40+ data centers. On-demand, interruptible, or reserved — find the right GPU at the right price.
Spending on AI Is at Epic Levels. Will It Ever Pay Off?
Tech companies are pouring hundreds of billions into data centers, taking on heavy debt, but current revenue is relatively tiny. Critics warn of a new dot-com bubble.
Why compute might get 10x more expensive in coming years
If a human-level software engineer that could run on an H100 equivalent, at current market rates for software engineers, that H100 should rent for over $250k a year. That’s 15x today’s spot price.
What Sort of AI Bubble Are We In?
Think broadband. Or, potentially, the 2008 housing market.
AI Is A Money Trap
In the last week, we’ve had no less than three different pieces asking whether the massive proliferation of data centers is a massive bubble, and though they, at times, seem to take the default position of AI’s inevitable value, they’ve begun to sour on the idea that
The Other Bubble
Buried in the 8000 words I wrote last week was a worrying story — that Microsoft considered drastic measures to free up capacity in its US-based servers for GPUs to power the AI boom. In an email shared with me by a source from earlier this year, Microsoft's senior leadership team
2025.21: The Upheaval Coming for the Internet Economy
The best Stratechery content from the week of May 19, 2025, including AI and the future of the web, slam dunks and moonshots at Google, and OpenAI entering the hardware business.
