Commentary: Micron’s massive profits are a guarantee of trouble

BERLIN: Micron Technology and its South Korean peers face an intractable problem. With data centres for artificial intelligence gobbling up supplies of their memory chips, there aren’t enough to go around. This scarcity is forcing up memory prices and making Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics astonishingly profitable. But customers are unhappy, governments could intervene and shortages may open the door to Chinese rivals. As recently as 2023 memory manufacturers were suffering huge losses as demand and selling prices collapsed. This is still a cyclical industry, but I think the bigger risk right now is this trio of companies being…