No one is hoarding RAM (or DRAM aka what we call as RAM)

Instead it has mostly been a supply side crunch, and none of the individual steps are "illegal"

1. AI servers use a special memory called HBM
2. HBM is good at what it does but it has a very 'high wafer area per server' (it is stacked, and each level is lower density than normal DRAM)
3. OpenAI (and apparently others) skipped middlemen of supply chain and directly negotiated with the fab to get priority for their HBM fabrication.
4. This crunched supply on the open market for HBM
5. Other people followed up
6. Fab companies pivoted other manufacturing lines to HBM because of so many orders (and because it is really profitable to manufacture)
7. That caused crunch on DRAM
8. Other memory manufacturers pivoted to more expensive segment of their expertise (eg Flash memory fab)
9. This caused crunch on other common memory segments
10. Expensive memory means you try to move to higher segment for your own products (eg: laptop, mobile) else you don't have any slack in your BOM. This is causing the consumer good crunch
11. Once stuff becomes expensive, people hedge and buyout inventories. This is causing the Covid era style supply chain shock. The impact radius is expected to increase in coming months even if RAM situation resolves.
12. "Special mission" against Iran is blocking critical supply chain for chips (speciality chemicals, helium, etc.)