Memory pricing power now dies at the buyer's budget ceiling, not at the shortage.
Record +98% quarterly spikes have already decayed to +13-18% as hyperscalers hit affordability limits and threaten volume cuts, while Nvidia stalled a near-100% HBM4 hike request through de-specification — buyer budgets and second-source leverage, not wafer scarcity, now set the ceiling on memory prices.
The same conclusion keeps arriving from across the workspace's research — 1 topics independently instantiate this theme. Filter the evidence by where it came from:
The flagship product's doubling request stalls against a buyer that controls the accelerator roadmap and can de-specify memory rather than pay.
The order-of-magnitude decay in quarterly price increases (+90-95% down to +10-15%) comes from budget-capped buyers cutting volumes and de-speccing capacity — buyer ceilings, not wafer scarcity, now cap memory pricing.