[arpinum]

Building a new memory fab takes 3-4 years, extremely capital intensive. Micron is spending $25B+ on Capex and more than half of that is for new memory capacity, a 3x increase over 2 years.

It is a very risky business, overestimate demand by too much and you go bankrupt. And yes, it is hard, especially HBM. Fabs are scaling up, but it is hard to estimate demand in 2029, and it may be better to not overshoot.

They also need to get in line to buy ASML EUV tooling, and ASML has to deal with scaling for their suppliers as well. There are tons of bottlenecks and complexities.

It is a commodity in that there are standards, not that there are many firms that can hit the standards.

This isn't gouging, this is bidding on fixed quantities and bidders having a high willingness to pay. Think of it like an auction.