This is the manufacturers being unable to absorb the sudden demand hike. Normally, their production capacity should be increased until supply meets demand. But then, how long will the demand last? What will happen when the AI bubble bursts? What exactly is going on on that front?
There's plenty to criticize the RAM manufacturers for. They've formed a cartel to undersupply for a long time now, keeping prices artificially high. GamersNexus did a recent piece[0] that spends about 5-10 minutes scratching the surface of that, but really gets the point across. If they hadn't done this, there would likely be more supply available today.
Without the collusion, RAM prices and supply would follow a pretty classic commodities cycle of boom and bust, with manufacturers overbuilding capacity, going bankrupt, leading to a shortage and high prices, and repeat. That was pretty much all of 1990-2010 or so.
RAM factories also have to choose between making DRAM, HBM, or NAND. These all compete for capacity planning. The GamersNexus piece also goes into how China was making a very strong contention in the NAND space through YMTC until the USA added YMTC to the Dept. of Commerce's "Entity List" and basically kneecapped that company. If USA hadn't done that, we'd also have more supply available today.
China's CXMT entry to the DRAM market is looking very strong. Their wafer production, from 2020-2025 has gone: 20k, 40k, 70k, 120k, 160k, 270k. They've increased production 70% in the past year. OpenAI recently purchased 40% of 2026's global DRAM supply, which works out to 900,000 wafers for OpenAI. CXMT's production is 30% of that order. I found numbers indicating 2025 RAM production was around 1.8 million wafers.
If CXMT can increase continue increasing production at their current trend, they could be producing today's entire global production by 2028. By then, almost all new RAM will require EUV lithography machines to produce. Many people have doubts that China can get EUV working and ASML is not allowed to sell them the world's only existing EUV lithography machines. China poached quite a few ASML employees and announced [1][2] just last month that they have a working EUV pilot. China could potentially deploy that EUV by 2028.
I'd cannot recommend strongly enough to watch this video [3] detailing what EUV lithography actually is and how it works. It's an amazing exposition. The next technology breakthrough will be Hyper-NA EUV. That will require a 1-meter diameter mirror so impossibly smooth that if it were the diameter of the solar system, then irregularities must be less than the height of one SpaceX Starship rocket.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfhhAfxK-A
1: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...
2: https://www.eetimes.com/china-euv-breakthrough-and-the-rise-...