[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)] Markets & Mayhem, a Twitter and YouTube account that shares tech trends, on March 29 highlighted three developments behind the recent tumble in prices for the latest DDR5 memory.

DDR5 is the latest generation DRAM standard used in PCs, servers and data centres. It is seen as a key component deployed in large volumes to build AI servers.

Markets & Mayhem cited OpenAI cutting spending sharply as the first reason for the drop in DDR5 memory prices. OpenAI changed course from a plan to build data centres worth $1.4 quadrillion and buying 40 percent of global wafer output, and has now shifted to leasing instead of buying computing resources directly.

Second, it said improvements in AI hardware, inference technology and model efficiency lowered the baseline hardware requirements needed to build data centre-grade infrastructure. Markets & Mayhem said technological advances over the past year have changed the game.

As a third factor, Markets & Mayhem pointed to a colder view in the bond market of capital expenditure on AI facilities. It noted that credit default swap, or CDS, indicators, which signal the risk that companies may fail to repay debt, have risen and investor demand for AI-related bonds has also fallen.

Markets & Mayhem said it expects these developments could lead to a broader trend of revisiting the scale of computing infrastructure build-outs.