Someone asked, if OpenAI discovered a technology that can halve inference costs, would it be bearish for semiconductors?

Inference costs are actually lower the better, as it reduces costs, not the dependence on hardware. However, there is certainly short-term bearish sentiment, which depends on the details they disclose; otherwise, it's hard to judge which specific upstream sector will be affected.
In fact, the only way to cause a storage crash is overcapacity: that is, production suddenly explodes, and everyone suddenly has no shortage, able to buy as much as they want.
The price increase is actually for financing expansion, essentially the downstream—such as Apple—paying off the debt from the price suppression in 2023.
As for efficiency, the impact of algorithms is temporary, and the market already expects them to keep improving.
On one hand, the more you improve efficiency, the more I buy, thus gaining a competitive advantage;
On the other hand, the downstream shortage is so severe that management won't stop ordering just because of some news—who would want to save a bit of money now only to repeat the mistake of not being able to get goods next time they are needed?
What these people are probably thinking now is: if only I had placed 10 times the storage orders last year,
Once bitten, twice shy; after experiencing such a big shock, how could they possibly cut orders?
Therefore, I believe the demand for storage is long-term and stable.
Another possibility: a group of geniuses develops a substitute for NAND/DRAM.
But no matter what the substitute is, it is still a semiconductor. Since it's a semiconductor, manufacturing requires lithography machines and foundries.
Isn't the current contradiction the shortage of lithography machines and foundries? Can new capacity just fall from the sky? The real reason for the storage price increase is not that DRAM is hard to manufacture or the technical threshold is too high, but that there are not enough factories.
Therefore, we can fully interpret the current industry-wide signing of LTA contracts, and even institutional stock purchases, as helping MU and SNDK finance new factories to provide new capacity for humanity's future.
In this way, you won't always worry about storage being a bubble and always thinking about a crash.
Storage is really different from silver and Bitcoin; at least, I've seen it for the first time in 5 years.
Tim Cook says it's the first time in his 40 years.
Thank you, everyone.
😂😂😂