YouSaid · the spoken record

Ray Wang

lines on the record: 36
first: 2026-02-16
most recent: 2026-02-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The price increase does gonna have some kinds of impacts to their purchases of memory, right? Assuming the hybrid scholars are the direct buyer of the memory, which is not necessarily the case in... At different locations, right? So if they assume they are the direct buyers of remembrance, for sure, right? If your initial call was using 100 million to buy a certain amount of memory, right now probably you need to do some discount there for sure, especially this thing that's probably gonna, the discount is going to be more and more in the coming quarter, right? So one of the things they'll try and they'll hopefully they are trying to do, but it is still very difficult. It's like they try to have a long-term agreement, right? To commit large bilingual for the year basis and to hopefully to have better pricing, but it's really hard to achieve that because why in the memory support I want to do that, right? We can negotiate the pricing in a quoting basis. We can actually get more money and especially given the current pricing and supply demand environment.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't think number one for sure. I think the Capex is not really, well, the Capex increases not because of the DRM price increase.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's hard to say no, right? Like one of the good, I think in the signal you are seeing in tiny Samsung and Micron, the dural inventory was dropping every single quarter since I think Q3 2025. That's just one other signal that you are not just buying the sort of products on the shelf, right? And the products are coming online in that quarter. You're also buying the products that in their inventory, right? You'll try to get as much of the product as you can. And given all the demand and how AI is developed so fast, like by monthly basis, it's hard to say like, hey, there's no pre-emptive purchasing behavior happening, right? And especially when the hyperskillers and the leading AI labs, they are competing with each other very intensively, securing capacity on the hardware is sort of the baseline, right? You want to get the best equipment that you can compete, right?”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And your dealers should go worse, right? Because memory record is going to try to make more HPN wafer, right? And that kind of pointing out more on commodity DRAM. I think the reason I say it's more tricky because two things. I mentioned about non-migration. It's actually happened this year. It's also going to happen in 2027, right? So tons of non-migration are going to come inline and being completed. So that will add a lot of additional bits for the memory supplier. Additionally, the wafer should have a lot more coming online by the end of 26 and throughout 2027. So I think those are the two variables that you want to factor in. From what I'm saying at least, I think like 2027, DRAM is going to still be shortage.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sorry, looping outside. Sorry, looping outside, looping 300. Okay. And if that's the case, then the demand will continue to be that strong, right? Your HPN shortage should even be worse compared to 26.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I won't say it will end. I will say it's a more tricky area to sort of estimate because based on the number, you know, I'm modeling we are seeing here, the demand is actually going higher and the shortage is actually going to worse. And the part of that is because a media AI server, the adhering content was going to 3x compared to Rego, right? So what kind of server?”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Straight, I really start kind of emerging in people's attention. That's to know is almost probably like, let's say, two years, right? Two years and a half, two weeks, three years. And we are looking at this cycle to last until, let's say, safely to say second half of 27, right? So we are looking at like kind of a four-year cycle. That's quite rare in the history. Usually the cycle, if you look at historically for the memory, is probably like 15 months, probably longest 18 months from start to its peak. But right now we are going through an area that is like, hey, the demand was going up, not a price. directly, but the demand at least was growing quite significantly over the past few years, right? And the pricing impact is happening right now starting from probably Q2 2025.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is an actually very dangerous question to Rio. You obviously asking whether this time is different, right? Yeah, right. I think there are a couple of things that actually runs with the history, right? Non-migration, fake capacity, right, those things. But I would say there's kind of difference in scene, right? Because we rarely see in a sort of super cycle that there's a new demand driver coming online. It's not only constrained demand. This thing is also constrained the supply, right? Because for example, in 2010 to 2012, there's a super cycle driven by mobile, right? So mobile is basically, hey, we have a new product coming online and it requires a lot of demand. And our capacity couldn't catch up. But right now, HMA is like, hey, okay, we need to do HBM, but your HBN is actually constrained your commodity DRN capacity. So I think this is the key difference that we are seeing for this, right? Apparently the demand accelerations is also last quite long, right? If you're really starting counting the sort of, I will say the AI acceleration in terms of demand, probably let's say second half of 2020.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I would say it depends on what's your purpose. For example, laptop, for example, right? If you are doing like video editing very much heavy, right, you'll probably still loft that. You probably still need quite a lofty theory, right? If you're just, you know, doing like, you know, document work, right? How cold depends on how you're going to use it if you're using like super intensively. I think you still need quite a good DRAN, especially you are pulling all different API from different places, right? So I would say it just really depends on the end purpose. I don't think at least I haven't seen there will be a kind of structural sort of theoretical destruction in the devices from Argentina AI.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's no doubt to me that some of the highest tier customer will get a value for sure. Of course, there are some more complex pricing negotiation behind. But I will say the value will still be the most important thing. I think that's probably what they're going to do, right? And besides thinking about by customer, I will think about kind of by sector. I will say the server DRN and HPN two things together will be the top priority. Because, you know, for the whole end market in DRM, we are seeing actually HBN and server DRN together. It's probably more than half of the DRN market, right? And that's important. And it's going so fast, right? And it's unlikely mobile, right? Mobile is kind of flat. The mobile demand is really driven by the”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But CSMD are gaining too momentum, right? Why and they are probably getting sort of a low end and med products. And they are also benefited by Chinese government's policy in terms of the self-sufficiency drive to, you know, whether it's for the commodity DRAN. Also right now they are pushing for HVN development that support Chinese AI hardware.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think there's definitely the gap. I think if you look at the memory in general, I think it probably three years, I would say, that this is very like timeless as of today, you know, who knows what's going to happen in the future. But I think there is definitely a gap. When I think about the competition pressure from Chinese makers, we always want to kind of separate the Chinese market and also the ex-China market. Also, the memory supply was looking at it, right? So Chinese market is probably about 25% of the global DRN demand. So really, the competition is happening in China because for the leading Chinese memory supplier like CSMT, for example, I believe like 90% or 95% of the revenue is coming from China and Hong Kong. So meaning most of the DR is really coming Chinese market competing with micro, Heinrich, and Samsung. I won't say that right now on the high end, right? I think it was still dominated by”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Value HVM, even though right now the margin of commodity rate is higher, right? I think they will still invest quite a lot on HBM and they will do their best to sort of balance the commodity DRM market. But I think this year, at least the number I'm saying is still quite significant shortage.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here that created a real dynamic that Tracy, that you talk about it. Because when your margin of how many DRAN is actually going higher, why would you make more HBM? Like, why, right? But I think if you really think about a long-term perspective on a memory supplier, right? Before the old AI blend, your demand is really driving from couple A market, right? PC, mobile, automotive, industrial, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? HBN right now is search as a new growth driver for the company, which we believe will last for the next few years, right? And for the memory supplier, they're thinking the same. And if you are not continuing to push your capacity, push your technology, when you're lagging behind, it's hard to come in back. And they go back to my previous point that this is an area that is relatively easier to differentiate your products, to get more market share more meaningfully, right? So I think three memory makers are merged.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so actually, you know, it's very interesting. I think what probably since 4Q where you wrote about this for our institutional client is that, you know, the margin, what typically we think HBN has higher margin, right, which is definitely true. But what's happening, you know, we see all this spot price, contract price going out so much, right? The margin of the commodity ran right now is actually higher than HBM.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and invest more in both HBN as well as the equipment that goes through advanced equipment that go back to the point I was talking about the non-migration right if you want non-migration you need to use more advanced equipment to produce more advanced chips”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a very good strategic question. I think every management will probably give you a sort of different answer or kind of on a high level probably same. But I think in general, right, look at historical cycle, it's like, you know, if we are seeing quite sustainable demand in the next few years and then clearly the capacity couldn't catch on the demand, they are going to expand the capacity in sometime, right? It probably not going to be like, hey, we announced in 2026. The capacity is really currently online meaningfully is probably 2028. So I think they will still announce, right? And we are seeing that from Micro, right? Micro is announcing new NemFAP in Singapore, right? They are expanding. They have two fabs currently. It's under construction in US, right? Also doing tons of non-migration and recently acquired the new fab from PSMC, which is a Taiwanese shoot maker. And all those move, you are already seeing some sign of that. Another sign you are seeing it's the capex, right? Both the High Nix Sams”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though your wafer capacity is constrained. But the challenge is two things. One, how fast you can ramp about this non-migration, right? Non-migration is typically difficult. Well, I won't say difficult. It takes time, right? To go into the most advanced data, right? You need EUV machine, right? You need all different kind of manufacturing processes. And not every fac can already be prepared to do that. So it will take time to rebuild all those production for the new events nut. Also, you are having the challenge to like, hey, okay, I want to do nine migration, right? But how are we going to balance the capacity with HPN? Again, that's another issue you want to kind of think about, right? Because some of the HPM process knock.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Increments and star manufacturing chips in the fan. So you have clean run shortage in all three major memory makers. So your incremental wafer capacity coming online for 2026 will actually be quite limited. So in that sense, how can you produce more bits, more dam bits while having only limited incremental waiver capacity? The only thing you can do is not migration. So in theorem process now, you have most advances right now is 1C, right? Going down, you have 1B, 1A, and 1X, blah, blah, blah, right? I think right now they are trying to do is migrate as much as they can to 1B and 1C, which on the same wavelengths compared to a legacy knot, right? So doing that way on the same wavelength, you can produce more bits. So that should produce more support.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think from the demand side, it's a lot difficult, right? From an OEM perspective, right? There's only that much you can do, right? You can dispack, right? But I don't think that addresses the fundamental issues, right? You are just dispect your products and so you can ship. But there this double edge swore, right? When you downgrade your products, that actually look bad compared to some of your peers who doesn't dispec and make your product less competitive that impact your final sort of quarterly or annual shipment. I think what needs to be addressed or what can be done is probably on the supply side, right? So supply side, we are mainly talking about a couple of vendors, right? The Micro Hein, Samsung, and for the legacy ones, right, you have Winbao, Nanya, and China like CSMT and JHICC, right? Lost people. So I think the most right way right now this year, because this year, the really challenges there's a clean room constraint. So clean room constraints, basically you have limited space that you can put all”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think those are the things that we're going to see in the coming months. I think we'll show impacts and people will start feeling it.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be a great example here because they're saying, hey, we have all the price high, right? But we actually managed pretty well. They're saying the real sort of meaningful margin impact will actually show up in the second half of 2026 instead of like the first quarter or second quarter. I think those sort of the things I'm seeing. So it's definitely already showing up in the market, right? I think what you can expect this year will be two things. One is sort of demand destruction in PCs, right? Broader consumer anatomics or the spec, whether it's a memory dispec, that's very straightforward, but also the camera. The camera is also very important. I'm hearing some of the dispell on the camera as well. And also on what we call delay lunch, right? Because you don't want to launch new products that have higher price than initially thought, which will impact your new launch performance, which usually your new launch product has better ASP, better margin compared to your previous generation product.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. We'll see how the arbitrage there works. But I think we're already seeing a lot of impacts, actually. But it kind of vary in different kinds of products, right? In pc you are surely seeing that Dell Nanovo answered, they are all having a price hike for kind of different products, right? And on the kind of demand side, you also seeing that I think for the Chinese smartphone market, right, a lot of the analysts, a lot of the research firm, right, a lot of the company was saying they are cutting off their smartphone out. For example, I think MediaTech recently left an earnings, right? They are saying they are cutting off the mobile to, I think it was 12 or 10 to 15% of the 2026 outlook. That's very significant, right? You're saying this year supposed to be 100 million, but it will essentially go to 90 million, right? That's very significant. So I think we are already seeing that, but kind of vary different places, right?”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, it's for nastier. People are doing like, hey, can you write a 20 page report, how cancer can happen on people, right? For example. Then we'll give like a 20-page report and they will wait like five minutes, right? And so if you think about the process, like they do all the calculation, all the researches, and also give you the output tokens that sort of the answer you get from your prompt, that significant way longer than the prompts that you are given, right? And that's also a lot longer response that you are getting when you go back to the GPD3. And remember, the usage we know back to GPD3, forgot the monthly daily users. But right now, I think the user for GPT was 800 million, right? And we are not included the users for the German, for cloud, for XAI, right? So if you multiply those effects, I think the memory is very significant and it's very clear to me.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think this needs to go down to the model layer, right? Because essentially, when you are trying to train, let's say you want to train the model, right? And then pure tons of data, you need to address tons of data there to train your model. And then for the inferencing part, you need one data after another to kind of compute one after another sort of a chain of salt, right? So to do that process, how can you keep the previous data in your process to keep it there and to process to another data that's coming out after, right? So that's why you need lot of memory. Then go back to my previous point, right? The long contest window.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of people talk about these days about a genetic AI. Yeah. Right agentic AI, you want to power those, you need a lot of CPU, you need a lot of CPU based server, right? So what's included in the CPU server? There's a lot of DRA in there, right? And a lot of AGNIC will also mean you need a lot of inference as well, right? And that goes back to my previous point. You need a lot of HPN and DR. So I will say kind of DRN and I got HBN and DRAN is kind of everywhere. And we kind of talk about storage, but storage is so everywhere in doing this process.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So to be very honest, I think it's everywhere. AI training, you know, Nitan Soul HBM, that just everyone knows, right? You also need a lot of the CPU DRAM, and that's LPDR and the DDR that going through the server. You also need HBN, right? So that's on the training part. In an inferencing, you also need HBM, right? And you also need the CPU DRAN to go through those workload, right? But the main one will be the HBM. And even the inferencing, right? Right now, they are separating to pre-fill and decode. And I think 80%, I think right now the most important thing will be decode, right? And the code is super, super memory bound and memory intensive. And HPN, the memory importance of there was just will only increase to my understanding, especially given the long condens window continue to expand and the inference usage adoptions continue to going up, right? So I think those are the typical way I would think about those, right? And the last thing is I think”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make sure that fits to the demand outlook you are seeing. Two is whether you can negotiate the best price in you can. But given the overall pricing environment, it was so volatile, so escalating so much, it's hard to not take in some kinds of margin impacts because essentially you try to get a chips, right? And you cannot just get too much away from your vendors.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there are a couple ways they do it, they will do it in terms of, they will do it different way, like in different environments and also different vendors, right? So it's hard to say, hey, this is exactly the way they do it. But typically, I think you can think about, hey, this is among the chips we're going to purchase in the next four months. And this is among we're going to commit, right? And we're going to sign the counterpart saying whether this term will be full months or for the LTA, you can go to as long as like to a year or even two years, right? So that's typical way you think about it. But typically you will be like, hey, we signed this contract for four months, right? And by the end, sorry, for three months, for a quarter, so by the end of that quarter, you negotiate a new contract pricing for the next quarter. So that's typically the way it worked. But the problem for right now is for consumer electronics, it's like the pricing probably is sort of, I would say, secondary because if you couldn't secure value, you couldn't even make any money, right? So number one is securing value.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, so that making you have like essentially having higher bandwidth and have enough capacity to support AI development over the past few years and in the next few years. And that's very different, right? You are stacking all these dice together compared to, hey, we just have like one DRAM product as a chip, right? And also that also comes down to the point that HBM manufacturing, also the packaging, both front end and back end is a lot more complex compared to commodity DRAM. And that's why I say commodity DRAN is more like commoditized. So I think HPN is less so because Islamo complex, right? And for supplier, you can actually differentiate either from the front end or back end technology. And when your yell is better, right? It gives you better margin, better ability to compare with your competitor, right? You know, stuff like thermal, things like that is the thing that will really stand out, right? And that's very different commodity theorem.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. So essentially the emergence of HBNs really go down to a kind of model layer because this is when you try to scaling your AI model, right? Your thoughts are increasing significantly every single year, right? Because your compete was increased a lot faster, but your memory bandwidth was actually sort of, it's increasing, but it's very limited, especially if you are using the memory from kind of traditional commodity DDRAN, then the bandwidth is actually very limited. So from a memory supply, they are thinking, hey, how can we expand the bandwidth to supporting the memory they're going to scale the AI, right? So let's console HBN. So the way they do HBN is, so they are stacking multiply 8 or 12 for even in the future 16 Dir and dies together.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think a couple of reasons, right? Fundamentally, the cost per bits for DRAM was actually coming down every single year significantly. Even in most recent years, it was also coming down, but the extent that they are coming down for every single year is actually slowing down over the past 10, 20 years, right? So the cost was keep going down, right?”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came more wafer for HBM. So here's the problem, right? You only have that much wafer and you try to do everything. So that's founding out a lot of the supply going to the commodity DRAP, right? So we have sort of both things happening and essentially comes down to like, I think really things start really kind of people aware. It's like probably Q2 2025 that people realize, hey, we actually couldn't find enough DRAN, both enough commodity DRAN and also HPN for their demand.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Behind the supply, right? Because before they are just supplying all the commodity DRAN, like DDR, LPDR, right? All the memory that goes to PCs, goes to laptops, goes to your mobiles, goes to Nintendo switches, right? But what's happening in this AI is like there's a new thing called HBM. Think about it's like a specialized memory for directly for AI accelerator. And that memory is extremely DR and wafer intensive. To give you a sense, right, you know, on the same wafer basis, you can produce three more bits if you do commodity DRAM, but you can only produce one bit of HBM, right? And that ratio will actually go in higher when you go to HBM4, HBM5 in the next few years, right? So in that way, the same way for basis, you can only produce that much HBM. And right now, what's happening is like, hey, this HBM is super, super profitable. And why not?”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, and there's a lot of purchases there, right? And there's sort of like upcycle, right? But these are very, very short upcycle because when the COVID gradually getting better, right, you actually don't need that much DRAM. And back then, the company will be like, hey, you actually don't have a sustainable demand, right? So they don't want to overinvest to expand their capacity. And when you go into the down cycle, your capex typically being very constrained. company from their perspective, they try to be conservative. So that leads to 2024 and 25 that your incremental wafer capacity that goes through DRAM is actually quite limited. But what's happening on the demand end is actually the demand was accelerating so fast, right? One way to look at it is to look at a media's earnings, right? And when you're on one side, you demand a saving so fast. On the other hand, the supply side, your supply just couldn't catch up. And there's more nuances.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think to really look at kind of some of the imbalanced supply demand dynamics, really, we want to look at what happened figures ago, right? Because your capacity to check your investment a few years ago and what's happening in 2023 and 2024, it's sort of a downcycle, right? Because remember, during the COVID, all the companies tried to plug in to buy tons of DRAM.”
2026-02-16 · Odd Lots · Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source