It just can’t. This candle is burning fast at both ends.

I hope you're right b/c right now feels like the classic "market can stay irrational longer than we can stay liquid" type situation.

The whole thing is speculation because its based off the back of letters of intent, no real contracts for anything. Its all still, currently, smoke and mirrors until something is inked and someone gets paid (or atleast, finance agreed)

So right now, we're watching bullshit speculators sink the market. And/or restricted supply being used to milk us like cows.

Yep, Western Digital said they were sold out of drives for all of 2026. Since 2026 is just starting, they haven't actually produced those drives or gotten actual money for them.

This is exceedingly normal procedure for manufacturing companies, and not limited to tech industry by any means. They know how much they can potentially produce on their lines, if they have predicted customers to fulfill the capacity for a full year they are basically sold out despite not having produced most of it yet.

The company I work for also has "sold out" for several of our factories because we have orders for 110% production capacity on them. Orders are not paid up front, they never are in any industry, it's always paid after delivery usually with a 30-90 days delay (and even more in some cases).

There is nothing spectacularly weird or out of place in the announcement they've made, it's basically standard procedure.

on the plus side, when the AI bubble pops, hardware will be soooooo cheap

Uhhuh so they're tooling up to make devices for a company that wont exist soon for datacenters that have no power.

All that shit is going in the landfill and they will be desperately repackaging HBM into consumer products. Bet.