Yes, it's a nefarious plot of AI producers to attempt a monopoly with a product that no one seems capable of demonstrating has the exponential value they're betting on.
Once everybody has a decent amount of VRAM they can just run local AIs and the need to mess with Ad-laden search results will fizzle. So of course they are desperate to grab a new monopoly. People haven't realised yet, that local AIs are fast and produce good results - on pretty average hardware. If they don't manage to grab a new monopoly Google will be history.
But it doesn't really need a nefarious plot for the price spikes. There is a serious lack of VRAM deployed out there. Filling that gap will take quite some time. Add to that the nefarious plot and the situation will most likely get even worse....
LLM inference is mostly read only, so high-bandwidth flash looks like it could provide huge cost savings over VRAM. It's not yet in commercial products but there are working prototypes already. Previous HN discussion:
Although their stated reason for hoarding is that they "really need it", I think it was a strategic move to make their competitors' lives more difficult with little regard for the collateral consequences to non-competitors, such as regular people or companies needing new computers.
I can never understand why so many people resort conspiracy theories when the obvious answer is supply and demand. I know well educated people, who do this when they talk about the resential property market. (Including an accountant).
Supply and demand can be caused by a conspiracy. OpenAI secretly bought 40% of the world's RAM on purpose. It's only a conspiracy if Anthropic and Google did something similar, though.
