Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron team up to block memory hoarding — prices might rise faster, but it could help encourage increased supply long term

In an impressive display of solidarity in one of the most hotly competitive and profitable tech industries, the three major memory makers, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, are jointly investigating their customers to prevent memory hoarding, according to Nikkei Asia. They’re asking customers to disclose their own customers and order volumes to ensure that no one is hoarding more memory than they need, exacerbating memory supply problems.

The immediate impact of this may well be to accelerate price increases for consumer devices. After all, if a company can’t buy cheaper memory now, it could be more expensive to buy it later. But this may help give memory makers the confidence they need to effectively invest in increased production, and it might just give smaller customers a chance to compete fairly.

Fool me twice… you can’t fool me again

Since memory demand started skyrocketing in 2025, memory makers have been inundated with calls to increase supply while brands panic-bought what was available. Ramping up production lines and retooling fabs is required, but it’s not that easy. NAND flash, particularly the newest and most capable chips, uses cutting-edge facilities, and those manufacturing lines take years to bring online.

Production can and is being increased, but the required investment for such an endeavour is enormous. Though the potential upsides are excellent – increased supply should mean the memory makers can sell more in turn – the potential downsides are there too. Most notably, if supply and demand equalize, any industry changes could swing the ratio in the other direction, leaving the memory companies oversupplied and competing with each other to sell what they have.

This isn’t some theorized scenario, either. It’s already happened, which is why Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are twice shy about increasing production.

During the pandemic, as everyone rushed to buy desktops and laptops to work from home, memory was once again in short supply, and the memory makers scrambled to catch up. They invested in new facilities, taped out new production lines, and pivoted the enterprise to adjust to a new world where memory wasn’t plentiful.

But it wasn’t to last. Just a few years later, as demand started to fall, problems arose. Because during those pandemic months and years, customers of the major memory manufacturers overbooked and built up stockpiles of their own, they didn’t continue to replace them when their own orders dwindled. By the end of 2022, memory sales had dropped by almost a third, and revenue was crashing right behind it as the going price for memory cratered.

This led to companies like Samsung actually cutting production of its 3D NAND and DRAM products. Although it claimed to be continuing R&D expansion and infrastructure building, it wasn't on the same scale as it would have been had orders remained strong. SK Hynix followed suit several months later, and those cuts continued throughout 2023 across a range of companies.

Which brings us back to 2026. This time, the memory makers are looking to ensure that the memory hoarding doesn’t happen, so that if and when demand and supply are realigned, there’s less chance of the swing continuing into oversupply, under-demand territory.

That’s good for them, because it means demand should remain stable even if there are wobbles in the AI industry, or even an eventual bubble burst and collapse. If memory customers don’t have their own stockpiles, they’ll still need at least some memory, even if demand falls dramatically.

But won’t this just keep memory prices permanently high? Won’t it help prevent a big pricing correction if and when that bubble bursts, just keeping us all paying over the odds for memory forever?

Perhaps.

A boon to consumers

In the near term, it might actually stop memory prices from rising as quickly. If customers of Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix have been overbuying – and why wouldn’t they, if they can afford it – then preventing that immediately should curb demand. That could help slow the current parabolic price rises for memory specifically. While that might mean the major customers who had planned on stockpiling cheaper memory end up raising their prices sooner than they had planned, the overall effect should see a slowdown.

Similarly, cutting the overbooked orders should make it easier for smaller memory customers to gain access to orders. If they aren’t trying to compete with not only major companies but also major companies overbuying, they should find it easier to get stock of memory at fairer prices. That has the potential to stabilize industries and prevent smaller brands from being pushed out of markets entirely, keeping competition healthier, which is always good for customers.

It could also help give the memory manufacturers the confidence they seek to build out production faster and more effectively. Whereas previously their efforts in boosting supply ended up with them having to reduce supply down the line, this way they can be more confident of a longer tail for their business.

We just had a flurry of new investment announcements from Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung, all of which are building new fabrication lines and packaging facilities. They won’t really come online until 2027-2028, but that at least gives us some time frame for when memory supply and demand could stabilize, with or without an AI bubble collapse.

Here’s hoping

What Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung are doing in looking over the books of their customers feels like them expanding their influence even beyond being one of the most important technological bottlenecks facing the world right now. It feels intrusive, and even a little oppressive. They’re looking to control not only this limited supply of incredibly important hardware, but what their customers do with it, too.

But what’s good for them may be better for us, too. Demand policing doesn’t create new chips, but in reducing the phantom demand, they do lower overall demand, and bring back a little more predictability to an industry that has been racing ahead of everyone’s best guesses as the world panic bought what was available in a rush against one another.

Now, maybe the smaller buyers can compete because they aren’t trying to compete against capital and stockpiles. The memory makers can commit to capacity expansion without fearing a post-AI cliff face, as they did with the pandemic aftermath.

None of that is guaranteed, and the bigger buyers will continue to outweigh their smaller contemporaries and garner the priority they seek. But if it can slow things down just a little, it might make the next hard year ahead a little softer while we wait for that new capacity to come online in the years to come. Cutting that overbuying now is one of the few levers the industry can pull to prevent this cycle from getting far worse before it may get better.