“…to capture more AI spending”
It takes an already-existing memory manufacturer 4–5 years to do a new factory.
I don’t know how much longer it’d take a non-memory manufacturer, but presumably more.
I’m not saying that this would be bad, but I’d expect that it’d be some way in the future if it happens.
If anyone can pull this off in a shorter timeframe it’s TSMC. But that’s very ambitious even for then, of course.
and the reason manufacturers aren’t building many more factories is because they’re extremely expensive and there’s no guarantee the same demand will still exist in 5 or 10 years. What if the AI bubble bursts, the market is flooded with second-hand supply, and all the new factories aren’t needed?
Micron is building new factories in New York, and they expect the first factory there to be online by 2030 at a cost of $50 billion (which is more than their entire 2025 revenue).
We had this issue during the crypto boom and the manufacterers that added capacity then are glad they did.
What else could use up that RAM? How about standalone VR? We could get mainstream adoption by 2030.
The point is building factories sometimes pays off
I agree that more supply would be great and building factories can pay off. It’s still very expensive though, and some banks are growing skeptical of the ballooning costs of AI-related projects.
Oddly it does say “adding memory back into its portfolio” which implies that they used to do memory, so they might have mothballed facilities.
It’s still a mammoth undertaking though.
Also, if they’re already producing on-die DRAM for SoC’s then perhaps that’s their entry point.
