I just saw some of the video. Refers to a class action lawsuit and quotes from it heavily. The class action seems to not be alleging price fixing per se (meeting in a smoky room and determining price) but rather than they are colluding to all cut DRAM supply and profit from the price spiking since the demand is unchanged. Even to the point of forgoing profits.

It doesn’t seem all that convincing though so I don’t think it will go anywhere. Something similar was tried a couple years back that was shot down by the courts. It’s not illegal for competitors in the market to behave similarly if they consider it in their rational interest to do so, it’s only illegal if they are cutting a secret deal for it so you have to have some good quality “plus factors” to convince the courts that some shady deal is going on. If there are reasonable alternatives to explain the behavior other than collusion then your case is kind of cooked.

It’s easier if they have slack production that’s being left idle to point to (which still didn’t work earlier) but now they’re all trying to churn out as much HBM as possible for insatiable data center demand and are building new fabrication plants. The video said as one example that they have better margins on DRAM than HBM but while that may be true in the current state where everyone and their mom is focusing on HBM, one question that could be posed is would that remain the same if one of the major companies swapped focus? Like one of the three biggest gives up on chasing the AI money and stops making as much HBM to prioritize DRAM. That would cut the supply for the former and boost that for the latter, which would send prices up in what they just abandoned while crashing the prices into what they’re re-entering. They could secure a lot of market share in DRAM but that could be considered to be a sucker’s bet to sacrifice the foothold in HBM and enormous stacks of AI cash in exchange for cornering the market on an older technology. Also they are reaching agreements to make HBM at longer prices but for a guaranteed period of time which makes their margins on HBM weaker but also gives them confidence that they’ll be getting that smaller amount of money for sure even if we get an AI bust.