Trader C0bb
Derivatives Trader & Portfolio Manager, Creator of G-Ron TrendCloud
AI is pulling memory capacity toward ever more valuable products while supply stays tight, which is why SK hynix and Micron rank #2 and #7 in the AI Investment Rankings. From May to July, South Korean DRAM export volumes fell 13% while their value rose 18%: fewer chips, more money. x.com
AI's bottleneck is supply arithmetic, not demand: fewer than five companies make the lasers that go inside an 800G optical module. NVIDIA put $2bn into two of them in March, and everyone else's lead times went past 2027 the same week. The names to target are SK hynix, Seagate, Western Digital, Teradyne, Lumentum, NVIDIA, Vertiv, Coherent, Camtek, Micron, Broadcom, TSMC, Fabrinet, Marvell and Arista. x.com
SK hynix's strong pricing and secured capacity could push memory stocks higher. Per Wall St Engine, its Q3 DRAM ASP rose by a high-20s percentage quarter over quarter, while long-term agreements cover more than half of its 2027-28 capacity. Those figures support the memory upcycle. x.com
Tight memory supply keeps the AI memory supplier trade in bill-of-materials names if it persists. The investor aleabitoreddit reports an SK hynix shortage outlook through 2030 and an operating-margin result near 80%. HBM allocation and average-selling-price guidance are the next tests; Korea has already priced the earnings print, so the next move depends on who locks capacity. x.com
Inflation, rising rates, Chinese competition and rising AI-related financial costs are pressuring the memory market. Micron, Samsung and SK hynix look exposed; waiting for the cycle to turn. x.com x.com
High-bandwidth memory supply may not keep pace with AI demand, supporting the memory makers. Anthropic's S-1 says SK hynix, Samsung and Micron are expanding capacity, but warns that large buyers or competitors could reserve much of the available output. x.com
Micron and SK hynix pricing in a memory shortage past 2030 extends the memory-cycle case beyond the Street's 2028 expectation. SK hynix's record quarter adds evidence: per Wall St Engine, revenue rose 328% to $78.9B, operating profit rose 632% to $62.8B, and operating margin hit 80%. Agentic and physical AI could add demand as they roll out. x.com x.com
Chinese memory makers YMTC and CXMT are using the AI-driven shortage to build a bigger competitive threat to Micron, Samsung and SK hynix. Per DigiTimes, both are scaling capacity with state backing to gain share; they are making inroads in PCs, and CXMT reportedly plans to ramp HBM3 later this year. The worst shortages ever seen have lifted prices only temporarily. Legacy DRAM makers face demand and supply pressure, and the market will eventually discount a far more competitive market. x.com
Samsung Electronics' surging profits show how the AI memory shortage is paying suppliers. Quarterly operating profit reached ₩107tn, nearly nine times a year ago, while sales more than doubled to ₩195.3tn. Alongside SK hynix's results and Microsoft's willingness to pay more for memory, the memory supercycle looks real. x.com
A worsening memory shortage in 2027 could favor Micron, SanDisk and SK hynix as AI stocks. Samsung warns that the shortage will worsen then. x.com
China's domestic market lets YMTC and CXMT threaten Micron, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix without entering US products. China receives 15-25% of smartphones and PCs and is on a path to at least 20-30% memory share over the next several years; current leaders are much too optimistic. History suggests at least a near-term semiconductor rally even if the AI trade has topped. It likely has not: agentic AI should give the trade room to run into 2027. x.com x.com x.com
Agentic AI's repeated context favors cache memory and storage demand for Micron, SK hynix and Sandisk over fresh GPU computation. Per @demian_ai, about 95% of input tokens for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash on OpenRouter were cache hits; storage matters unless routing and caching keep almost everything in GPU memory. New products such as 3D DRAM and HBM-on-logic could be the final trigger for a full memory-stock re-rating. x.com x.com
