Memory manufacturers accused of artificially creating an RAM shortage

The biggest producers of memory — Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology — have found themselves at the center of a new high-profile lawsuit in the United States. A class action has been filed in a federal court in California, accusing the companies of collusion, deliberately restricting DRAM supplies, and inflating memory prices.

The plaintiffs claim that the manufacturers intentionally cut production of standard DRAM at the very moment global demand surged because of the growth of artificial intelligence, cloud services, and data centers. According to the claim, the companies shifted production capacity to the more profitable HBM memory used in AI accelerators, while simultaneously maintaining a shortage of traditional RAM. This, the lawsuit says, caused prices for memory modules for computers, laptops, and smartphones to rise sharply.

The authors of the lawsuit even coined their own term — RAMpocalypse. In their view, the crisis was not a natural consequence of the AI boom, but the result of coordinated actions by the three companies, which control most of the global DRAM market.

If the court finds the allegations justified, the manufacturers could face multibillion-dollar payouts. Compensation would be sought both by ordinary buyers and by companies that purchased devices and components with RAM at inflated prices.

Notably, such accusations are not new. In the early 2000s, the biggest DRAM manufacturers were already found guilty of an international price-fixing conspiracy and paid hefty fines. Later, new class actions were filed against them, but some were dismissed by courts for lack of evidence. The new case is based on events of recent years and aims to prove that the practice of restricting supplies may have repeated itself amid the rapid growth in demand for memory for AI.

For now, these are only allegations, and none of the companies has been found guilty. However, if the plaintiffs succeed in proving the existence of a conspiracy, the case could become one of the largest antitrust proceedings in the history of the semiconductor market.