Semi Doped

The hyperscaler memory tax quarter.More CapEx? Pssh. We knew flops needed scaling.But $25B at Microsoft alone just to pay higher component prices? A memory tax. That's the news.NAND? Sold out. HBM? Sold out.What we cover:SanDisk revenue +97% sequential.78% gross margin. Guidance above 80% next quarter.Samsung HBM4 first to ship. Demand outstripping supply.DeepSeek v4 goes SSD-centric. KV cache offloads to flash.Microsoft: $25B of 2026 CapEx is just memory pricing.Jassy: memory shortage pushes on-prem to AWS.Qualcomm: mystery custom ASIC. Ships December.New Semi Doped with @vikramskr and @austinsemis.Check out our Substacks- https://www.viksnewsletter.com/ - https://www.chipstrat.com/Chapters:0:00 Intro and Vik goes full-time5:15 Earnings week: the memory tax7:26 Samsung HBM4 and the Gbps race14:42 Is the memory tax worth it?17:37 SanDisk and the SunDisk origin23:22 78% gross margins and 5-year supply lock-ins29:29 DeepSeek v4 and SSD-centric inference38:49 Hyperscaler CapEx and the cloud pull42:49 AI accelerators: TPU, Trainium, MTIA