Define "soon"

RAM production is completely sold out for 2027[1] which means the prices are locked in until after then.

It takes about 2 years from the time ground if broken for a new fab to be built and producing RAM.

There were some new fabs announced between February and April this year by both the Korean and Chinese manufactures, so that new capacity might start having an impact in 2028 in the most optimistic scenario.

Samsung says supply will remain tight in 2028[2], and Micron says "tight beyond 2027"

The best hope is that new (Chinese) players overbuild fab capacity and supply outstrips demand. That isn't likely, but perhaps in the late 2028-2029 timeframe could happen.

[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/351344/memory-makers-seal-2027-d...

[2] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/112966/memory-shortages-will-...

[3] https://s25.q4cdn.com/621799436/files/doc_events/2026/06/Q3-...

There are some news about AI/LLM progress rate flattening out: People uses the cheaper model more than better model. Some AI startup in Chinese lose half of value.

There was an article last week that a Chinese RAM manufacturer was planning to add new fabs to be able to ramp up. More or less simultaneously there was also an article on Apple considering switching to using china sourced RAM for China destined devices.

Lots, if your time horizon is ~5 years for not buying new hardware, you're good.

Otherwise you'll have to wait to see if the AI circular financing club collapses- if you still have a job, there should be deals to be had...

There are signs that the money faucet is being turned down. Various investments that were announced have been quietly canceled or reduced in scale. I don't think it'll happen soon, but it seems unlikely to be more than a couple years. If I were a betting man, 12-18 months seems right. The AI companies that can make enough money will survive, the ones running on investor cash and debt, won't.

Efficiency is improving, both in hardware and in software and in intelligence density (smaller models can effectively do more of the AI work that needs doing), so I think the pure data center plays will falter. If there isn't some other business attached, they're never going to recoup their investment. Anthropic and OpenAI are buying all the compute they can find right now, but efficiency gains, especially those coming out of Chinese labs where they must be more efficient to compete, will make it less and less of a problem.

I mean, think about the hardware we use for AI. It's basically an accident. GPUs were not designed for AI (though they are becoming more focused on AI). The specialized AI hardware industry is just ramping up.

So, we're still early in the curve for how efficient both the hardware and software can be at performing these tasks, and given the effectiveness of recent very small models (e.g. DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 and Qwen 3.8 27B), I just don't see a long future for giant data centers built around billions of dollars worth of last years graphics cards. As with the crypto mining operations, at some point, it becomes more expensive to run the hardware than it makes in revenue. And, as with the crypto mining operations, when the money dries up, the hardware hits eBay and prices drop.