Today NVIDIA launched a DGX Spark with half the memory for a thousand dollars more than last year’s model. The day before, Micron reported the most profitable quarter in its history and told investors to expect higher memory prices. We read what the memory makers themselves publish: earnings releases, investor presentations and filings. Taken together, those documents show that the RAM crisis is not a shared hardship. The buyer pays for it, and the suppliers report record profits from it. That has to stop.

What the memory makers say in their own documents

You do not need a leak to see how this works. Micron, Samsung and SK hynix make roughly 90% of the world’s DRAM, and they describe their strategy in public.

Micron walked away from consumers on purpose. In December 2025, Micron announced it would exit its Crucial consumer business after nearly 29 years. Its own explanation was “to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.” Micron stopped shipping Crucial products to the consumer channel at the end of February 2026.

Micron’s PC and phone memory now runs at a 90% gross margin. In its fiscal Q4 2026 prepared remarks, Micron reports that its Mobile and Client Business Unit, which sells memory for PCs and phones, had revenue up 14% “driven by higher pricing, partially offset by lower bit shipments.” That unit’s gross margin was 90%, “driven primarily by higher pricing.” In plain terms, Micron shipped less memory to the PC and phone market and charged so much more for it that revenue still grew.

Micron plans for prices to stay high. The same document says new long-term contract talks “are negotiated with higher pricing based on prevailing market conditions,” and that “even at floor prices, we expect margins meaningfully above any prior cycle peak margins.” Micron will “remain disciplined” and add equipment capacity “appropriately with our demand and the market environment.” Company-wide revenue for the quarter was $54.23 billion, against $11.32 billion a year earlier, at a GAAP gross margin of 86.8%.

Samsung put its limited capacity into servers. Samsung’s second-quarter 2026 results describe a memory business that set records by “proactively addressing AI demand despite limited capacity with a primary focus on server products.” Samsung adds that the industry-wide price increase “also contributed to the record earnings.” Its plan is to focus on “high-value-added products.”

SK hynix posted a 76% operating margin. In its second-quarter 2026 filing, SK hynix reports record revenue of 79.3 trillion won, up 257% from a year earlier, and an operating margin of 76%. It credits “significant further price increases” in both DRAM and NAND.

None of this is illegal on its face. Selling to the highest bidder is what companies do. But it shows that the shortage reaching consumers is partly the result of choices about where memory goes.

They have cut supply on purpose before

The industry has done this in the open before. In April 2023, with prices falling, Samsung announced it would cut memory production “by a meaningful level” to support prices. In 2023 Micron cut DRAM and NAND wafer starts by about 20%, and later by close to 30%. Those cuts restored prices. They also meant the industry entered the AI boom with less capacity than it could have had.

Memory makers expand supply slowly and on their own schedule. TrendForce now says PC DRAM supply could decline in 2027 as more capacity moves to servers. It expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise another 10–15% in Q4 2026.

The 2026 price-fixing lawsuit, and what it does not prove

On June 25, 2026, 17 plaintiffs sued Samsung, SK hynix and Micron in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case is Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics and was brought under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. According to Tom’s Hardware, the complaint argues that the three companies used a coordinated shift toward HBM as cover to curtail DDR3 and DDR4 production, pushing prices up roughly 700% over four years. The plaintiffs include individuals and small PC shops.

Read this carefully. These are allegations, not findings. A similar class action filed in 2018 was dismissed, and in 2022 the Ninth Circuit ruled that the companies’ conduct was “more likely explained by lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior.” The three companies say they act independently. The new case will have to show an actual agreement, not just three suppliers making the same profitable decision.

History is why many buyers find the allegation plausible. Between 2002 and 2006, U.S. prosecutors pursued a DRAM price-fixing cartel: Samsung paid a $300 million fine, Hynix $185 million and Infineon $160 million, and executives went to prison. Micron received immunity from European regulators for reporting the cartel.

NVIDIA and AMD pass it all on

The companies that build on this memory are not neutral victims either.

NVIDIA reported $96.2 billion in revenue for its quarter ending in July 2026, up 106% from a year earlier, at a 75.0% gross margin. In that quarter it returned about $26 billion to shareholders. Yet the DGX Spark went from $3,999 at launch in October 2025 to $4,699 in February 2026 and $6,950 today. That is roughly 74% more. The new 64GB model costs $4,999. NVIDIA has not said how much of the $2,951 increase is memory and how much is margin. Our breakdown of the DGX Spark 64GB price has the details.

AMD has been passing memory costs down to board partners. Tom’s Hardware reports Radeon RX 9000 prices rising $10 for every 8GB of VRAM, with more increases scheduled. Mini PCs built on AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 show what it looks like on the shelf. In September 2025 the GMKtec EVO-X2 with 128GB and 2TB listed at $1,999.99 on Amazon, according to Gizmochina. In late September 2026 the same configuration costs $3,649.99 on GMKtec’s own store, and the cheapest 128GB Ryzen AI Max+ 395 boxes sit at $3,099. We covered those prices in why the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 is not worth $6,500.

Shrinkflation is the quieter version

TrendForce reports that PC brands are cutting SSD capacities in mainstream models to protect their costs. NVIDIA’s 64GB DGX Spark has half the memory and, according to The Register, half the storage of the 128GB model. The name on the box stays the same while the hardware inside shrinks, and the smaller box costs more than the bigger one did a year ago. Related: the best PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs for mini PCs.

What buyers can actually do

A boycott is not a slogan. It is the only signal these companies read. If these prices are going to stop, it will be because they stop selling.

  • Do not pre-order at inflated launch prices. A launch price set in the middle of a shortage tests what buyers will tolerate.
  • Compare price per GB. The DGX Spark went from about $31 per GB of memory at launch to about $78 per GB for the new 64GB model. Do that math before every purchase.
  • Read the configuration, not the chip. “Up to 128GB” describes the chip. Check the RAM and SSD of the exact model in writing.
  • Buy what you need now. Every extra gigabyte bought today carries a crisis premium.
  • Look at used and previous-generation hardware. Last year’s 128GB machine still runs the same models.
  • Use return windows, and report misleading listings to retailers and consumer agencies. If you bought memory or a memory-heavy PC in the U.S. in recent years, follow the Garciaguirre case: class actions are how individual buyers get a say.

Verdict

The memory makers’ own documents say it plainly. They sell less memory to the PC and phone market and charge far more for it, at a 90% gross margin. One of them shut down its consumer brand to serve bigger customers. Device makers like NVIDIA pass every dollar to the buyer while keeping 75% margins. Whether a court ever finds this illegal is a separate question. As buyers, we do not need a verdict to stop paying absurd prices for less hardware.