A new lawsuit says the RAM shortage may involve more than AI demand.

Rohan Paul Twitter · Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) · 2026-07-01

A new antitrust lawsuit accuses Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron—who together control roughly 90% of global DRAM revenue—of coordinating to restrict commodity RAM supply while AI demand for high-bandwidth memory provided cover for the squeeze.

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Appears in

AI Demand Outpaces Moore's Law: Semiconductor Import Prices Hit Historic Highs

Extraction

Topics: dram-antitrustsemiconductor-supply-chainmemory-marketai-hardware

Claims

Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron collectively control roughly 90% of global DRAM revenue, giving buyers few competitive alternatives.
The lawsuit alleges all three firms reduced commodity DDR3 and DDR4 supply rather than competing to capture higher prices—behavior inconsistent with a normal competitive market.
The plaintiffs allege that surging AI demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) served as cover for cutting commodity DRAM output.
Samsung previously paid $300 million and SK Hynix paid $185 million in prior DRAM price-fixing settlements, establishing historical precedent.
The antitrust case will likely hinge on discovery of internal communications showing actual coordination rather than independent parallel behavior.

Key quotes

Producing less can keep chips scarce, so buyers must pay much more for each chip. That is the plaintiffs' core antitrust claim.

Doing the same thing at the same time can look suspicious, but antitrust law usually needs more than similarity to prove illegal collusion.

Samsung previously paid $300M for DRAM price fixing, while Hynix paid $185M.