Good grief. Outside of pandemic supply issues, eg, in normal times, a entity (gov, corp, billionaore), would go to a large producer, and place an order.
I assure you, they'd pay less per unit, in bulk, not more.
You think they'd buy off of ebay?! Amazon?
No! They'd bypass the little guy, and get a large run done themselves. And yes, it isn't a big deal.
If they had to, they'd put out a RFP and get corps to submit quotes on qty whatever.
Here's a secret... people love money. If someone wants a large order of something, it happens.
Even in the pandemic, if govs want anything, gloves, masks, they get it well before you or I, before corps.
It’s not just “pandemic supply”..even in the more mature GPU market Nvidia isn’t even close to keeping up with demand. There is not a button you can push to spin up more fabs.
The fact that you’d compare gloves and masks to chips is telling.
I assure you, they'd pay less per unit, in bulk, not more.
You think they'd buy off of ebay?! Amazon?
No! They'd bypass the little guy, and get a large run done themselves. And yes, it isn't a big deal.
If they had to, they'd put out a RFP and get corps to submit quotes on qty whatever.
Here's a secret... people love money. If someone wants a large order of something, it happens.
Even in the pandemic, if govs want anything, gloves, masks, they get it well before you or I, before corps.