If the OpenAI Hodling Company buys and warehouses 40% of global memory production or 900,000 memory wafers (i.e. not yet turned into DDR5/DDR6 DIMMs) per month at price X in October 2025, leading to supply shortages and tripling of price, they have the option of later un-holding the warehoused memory wafers for a profit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142100#46143535
Had Samsung known SK Hynix was about to commit a similar chunk of supply — or vice-versa — the pricing and terms would have likely been different. It’s entirely conceivable they wouldn’t have both agreed to supply such a substantial part of global supply if they had known more...but at the end of the day - OpenAI did succeed in keeping the circles tight, locking down the NDAs, and leveraging the fact that these companies assumed the other wasn’t giving up this much wafer volume simultaneously…in order to make a surgical strike on the global RAM supply chain..
> As of late 2025, 900,000 finished 300 mm 3D NAND memory wafers (typical high-volume inventory for a major memory maker) are worth roughly $9 billion and occupy about 104–105 million cubic inches when properly warehoused in FOUPs. → Economic value ≈ $85–90 per warehoused cubic inch.