In fairness, it’d have theoretically been possible to predict the 2025 AI boom and start construction on new factories back in 2021, and prediction is one aspect of what an economy does.
I mean, I didn’t see it, or I’d have bought memory maker stock and/or memory. :-)
The memory makers got blindsided, as did most of the industry. I don’t think that a command economy would have done better, mind.
Back during COVID, the memory makers were losing money because nobody wanted the surplus of memory they had, and had started suspending their build-out plans and were contracting rather than expanding:
Boise-based Micron Technology said it would cut its workforce by 10% next year while reporting a decline in earnings – swinging to a loss in the latest quarter.
The technology giant has roughly 48,000 employees around the world, according to its latest SEC filing. The job cuts would come through both voluntary employee departures, as well as layoffs.
“On December 21, 2022, we announced a restructure plan in response to challenging industry conditions,” the company wrote in a filing with the SEC. “Under the restructure plan, we expect to reduce our headcount by approximately 10% over the rest of the fiscal year 2023, through a combination of voluntary attrition and personnel reductions.”
“In the last several months, we have seen a dramatic drop in demand,” he said in a statement. He said profitability for the rest of the year will continue to be challenging but could recover later in the fiscal year, which runs through August.
Anyone who could have predicted the boom could have rolled up and bought up all that excess production. There wouldn’t have been those layoffs, and the person who bought all that supply would have been in possession of a rather valuable cargo as of winter 2025–2026. Could have gone to PNY or someone like that that turns those memory chips into DIMMs and sold them for a bundle.
In fairness, it’d have theoretically been possible to predict the 2025 AI boom and start construction on new factories back in 2021, and prediction is one aspect of what an economy does.
I mean, I didn’t see it, or I’d have bought memory maker stock and/or memory. :-)
The memory makers got blindsided, as did most of the industry. I don’t think that a command economy would have done better, mind.
Back during COVID, the memory makers were losing money because nobody wanted the surplus of memory they had, and had started suspending their build-out plans and were contracting rather than expanding:
https://boisedev.com/news/2022/12/21/micron-workforce-cuts/
Anyone who could have predicted the boom could have rolled up and bought up all that excess production. There wouldn’t have been those layoffs, and the person who bought all that supply would have been in possession of a rather valuable cargo as of winter 2025–2026. Could have gone to PNY or someone like that that turns those memory chips into DIMMs and sold them for a bundle.