alt Hacker NewsMemory might be a moat. A cynical view is this is why openAI is buying up all the capacity for HBM. If they have all the memory then we plebs won't be able to afford hardware to run local models. So we instead we have to rent their models basically just to get access to the memory.
I doubt it. Memory manufacturers are going to ramp up, given the demand. Can AI make enough money to buy up the increased capacity forever? Whereas each user just needs enough money to buy up the memory that they need for their use. AI needs to invest billions, small users have to invest thousands. And the payback is going to be there for the small guys, so that even if they have to borrow to get the memory, they will quickly be able to repay it.
This is not a game that big AI is going to be able to win.