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Chip giants SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are the subject of a class action lawsuit claiming that the three have engaged in “concerted anticompetitive behaviour” in the DRAM market.
As reported by Law360, the class is represented by antitrust specialist Bathaee Dunne LLP, which alleged in its initial filing with the District Court for the Northern District of California that the three companies coordinated their exit from DDR3 and DDR4 production and pivoted to producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for data centres. That’s on top of accusations that they have been fixing supplies and prices since 2022.
Lawyers claim that the trio has cut the supply of consumer – or ‘conventional’ – DRAM in defiance of “all economic and business logic”, pointing to Micron’s 2025 shutdown of its consumer-facing Crucial DRAM business at what is claimed to be its “most profitable point in its history”. Conventional DRAM prices have risen by around 700% over the last four years.
The filing also notes that Samsung, Hynix and Micron were found to be taking part in a criminal conspiracy to fix DRAM prices between 1998 and 2002.
Lawyers also say that due to the massive amount of capital required to set up a DRAM fab – estimated to be $15-to-$20 billion – and the long roadmap involved, it’s hard for new entrants to join the market and “discipline” the three companies.
The class is made up of consumers and brick-and-mortar retailers.
SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron have all signed huge deals to provide hardware for AI data centres and has thus focused on providing chips for that purpose. As a result, there has been a severe downturn in consumer-facing DRAM and NAND supply, resulting in soaring prices.
Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Valve have all increased the costs of their game hardware; Valve also recently said that its soon-to-be-released Steam Machine console costs more than it would like as a result of the AI boom.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz earlier this year, one industry expert described the current market for hardware as “totally crazy”.
In its financials for its last quarter, Micron reported a 1,398% increase in profit year-on-year.
