Dylan PatelFounder and Chief Analyst, SemiAnalysis · The semiconductor-AI stack

AI Demand Sparks, Chip Shortage Fears

24 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:13

Dylan Patel breaks down how AI demand is triggering panic buying across the chip supply chain. DRAM inventories at Samsung and Micron have fallen since Q3 2025 as hyperscalers and AI labs compete to stockpile capacity, creating a bullwhip effect that amplifies shortages.

Actually, on that note, do you see a lot of stockpiling in the market or panic buying right now where people are seeing these forecasts and they're freaking out and just buying whatever they can?
How you get a bullwhip effect.
That's right.
Yeah, it's hard to say no, right? Like, um, one of the good, I think, the signal you're seeing in China, Samsung and Micron, their DRAM inventory was dropping every single quarter since, I think, Q3 2025. Right, and that's just one of the things that you are not just you know buying the sort of the products on the shelf, right? And the products that coming online in that quarter, you're also buying the the products that in their inventory, right? You are you are trying to get as much of the product as you can. And you know, and you know, given all the demand and how AI has developed so fast, like by month monthly basis, it's hard to say like hey, there's no. sort of preemptive purchasing behavior happening, right? And especially when the hyperscalers and the leading AI labs, they're competing with each other very intensively, securing capacity on the hardware is sort of the baseline, right? You want to get the best equipment that you can compete, right?