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> up and down cycles have bankrupted the vast majority of players in the past

Exactly, so what’s the incentive for anyone to sink half a billy into building out more capacity.

The existing players get to rest on their laurels and succeed whether or not the AI bubble busts.

The incentive is that your 2 competitors will build more than you and gain market share on you if you are too conservative.

Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron all have to balance between capex spending, making as much profit as possible, and risk of bankruptcy.

So are the new competitors currently in progress of starting up? Because it takes at least several years.

Only Chinese companies have a chance. Problem is that China can’t buy EUV machines and the most advanced memory chips now use EUV.

Heck, the US is now pressuring ASML to not sell even DUV machines to China, period.

Yeqh that is a challenge. DDR5 and LPDDR5X are both manufacturable with DUV. So let's hope they still get access to that...

When costs are high enough, you can recoup that, if you have an appetite for risking the downturn.