We are biased. Given our faith in the rapidly rising utility of AI that can only be done on a completely new type of hardware, we wrote in January about the theme of this era: Silicon Shock. Given what we saw as the implications, we even dared to compare it with the oil shock of the 1970s. 

Ever since, we have argued in multiple articles that the AI boom has escaped the data center and is repricing the physical economy. Software's Tollbooths described the parallel retreat from cheap, unlimited software. Silicon Shock II traced the first macro effects, while The Second Death of SaaS showed how AI was changing the software bundle itself.

The world is awash in nominal growth, with top lines rising at a clip rarely seen historically. The shock is taking unprecedented forms in the segments closest to the technology epicentres. The evidence is no longer a collection of forecasts. Buyers are financing wafer plants, accepting take-or-pay clauses, reserving turbines and chillers years ahead, redesigning systems around unavailable memory, shrinking finished products and passing costs into hardware, hosting and software. Official inflation series have started to register the same movement.

In the financial world, the beneficiaries are returning cash to shareholders while the payers are raising astronomical amounts from capital markets. The pessimists worry over the planned expenditures, while the operators continue to report rapid, actual paybacks due to amazing pricing power. The numbers have become so large and moving varyingly across so many lines that some companies have resorted to consignment accounting to make it easier for analysts to read their pricing power, without getting caught up in apparent margin numbers that are effectively pass-throughs. 

The macro-analysts remain behind in not only recognizing the inflationary aspects, but have yet to begin discussing simple items like prepayments that are turning out to be the current period’s replacement for FDI. The ROI analysts fail to notice the unprecedented pricing power being exercised at a large number of choke points, with the simplistic assumptions of demand-supply balance plunging in the other direction without factoring in not only the nature of demand explosion but also any intelligent behavior from the world’s latest nouveau riche. We have discussed the last aspect a handful of times in other notes, and maintain that the cycles ahead are unlikely to follow any of the patterns we witnessed in the previous decades.

The evidence collection below contains a large number of items that a patient reader can explore for investment ideas. They are the reason why our funds not only have nearly 50% earnings growth at the portfolio level this year, but also continue to see upward revisions. By design, we were fixated on publishing 100 pieces of evidence, and no more or less. We tired our agents for days to ensure we do not have filler repetitions, and in the end, the problem became the reverse of what to exclude and what to merge with others so that we do not publish more.

The main observation window is 1 June to 25 August 2026. A limited number of April and May actions are included only when later evidence shows that the new price, shortage or contract remained operative during the main window. Reported or channel evidence is identified as such. One number represents one product market and one materially distinct price action, shortage, redesign or exceptional contract. Several suppliers may appear inside one number when they show the breadth of the same event. The categories are roughly ordered from the deep upstream (materials) to the final goods and macro numbers.

And, Now the List:

Wafers, chemicals and board materials

1. Wafer Financing. Micron offered GlobalWafers up to $500 million and signed a ten-year US 300mm-wafer supply agreement. A chipmaker is financing the raw capacity it needs to reserve. 9 July
2. Wafer Repricing. AI-grade silicon wafers entered another reported round: high-end products rose about 18-22%, heavily doped epitaxial wafers 10-15%, while orders and lead times extended through Q3. 17 June
3. InP Lock-Up. Chinese export licenses delayed indium-phosphide wafers and interrupted downstream production; six-inch wafers approached $5,000, while Lumentum put down about $87 million to reserve AXT supply through 2031. 11 June to 29 July
4. WF6 Exit. Two Japanese producers withdrew roughly a quarter of global tungsten-hexafluoride capacity from 1 July. Chinese price discovery then ran several times prior levels as advanced logic and multilayer memory competed for the deposition gas. 10 June to 7 July
5. HF Squeeze. Korean electronic-grade hydrofluoric-acid suppliers reportedly raised prices 15-20% from June and again in July, taking cumulative increases toward 30%; Taiwan's Formosa followed with a Q3 adjustment. June to July
6. NF3 Shock. Mitsui stopped NF3 production on 31 March, while repairs at Kanto Denka's fire-hit plant slipped to mid-2027. By July, reported Chinese electronic-grade spot prices were roughly double early-2026 levels. 11 June to 22 July
7. Phosphoric Squeeze. Xingfu Electronic Materials put another G3 electronic-phosphoric-acid increase into effect on 1 July, with locked contracts following after 30 days and spot delivery at 15-20 days. Customer Zhongjuxin lifted planned 2026 purchases from RMB15 million to RMB55 million as procurement costs rose. The reported spot path, roughly RMB28,000 a tonne at year-start to RMB49,000-53,000 in late June, is channel evidence rather than a disclosed contract price. 26 June to 30 July
8. Solvent Cutoff. Japanese suppliers warned Samsung and SK hynix in April that PGME and PGMEA, solvents used beneath photoresist, hard masks and HBM bonding adhesives, could not be reliably procured after the Hormuz blockade disrupted naphtha. Japanese spot sales halted, and Korean restrictions kept the shortage live into summer, although fabs held substantial inventory and reported no production loss. 21 April, operative June to July
9. Glass Notice. Fulltech raised E-glass cloth 30% and low-dielectric FLD2 cloth 15% from 1 July, pushing inflation into laminates, PCBs and package substrates several layers below the accelerator. 26 June
10. Glass Allocation. Nittobo controlled about 90% of T-glass and 60-70% of NER glass; meaningful extra supply was unavailable before mid-2027, and earlier increases of roughly 20-30% had not cleared the shortage. 30 June
11. Copper Reservation. HVLP4 copper foil moved into multiyear capacity planning, then Kingboard lifted processing fees by RMB5/kg on thin foil and RMB8/kg on 2oz material. Scarcity appeared in both reservation behavior and conversion price. 8 June to 6 July
12. Laminate Ratchet. Kingboard's July notice raised FR-4 and prepreg 15% and CEM-1/22F 10%. It was another turn in a supply-chain-wide CCL and prepreg repricing wave, not a collection of separate numbers for every supplier letter. 6 July

The machines that make the chips

13. Lithography Slots. ASML's low-NA EUV output was almost booked through 2027 while immersion DUV faced a parallel constraint. Planned 30% capacity additions were being absorbed before the tools were built. 15 July
14. DUV Repricing. Reuters reported that some Chinese buyers accepted about 10% increases on mature ASML DUV lines while TSMC resisted other increases. ASML confirmed stronger pricing power and active negotiations, but not the reported percentage. 15 July
15. TEL Repricing. Tokyo Electron told investors that it was renegotiating prices with several customers and applying increases to current models, not only new machines. No percentage was disclosed, but the action reverses the usual logic of cheaper repeat purchases. 30 July
16. Paid Expedite. Bernstein reported that Tokyo Electron had begun charging for faster delivery, a service it had historically supplied free, while SCREEN pursued its own staged increases. The fee was not disclosed by TEL, so this is reported evidence that delivery speed itself became a priced product. 15 June
17. Front-End Waits. Conventional etch and deposition tools moved from roughly six months to about twelve; imported RF-power subsystems reached as much as twenty-four months. A funded fab cannot produce wafers without the missing machines. 19 August
18. Back-End Waits. Advanced-packaging and semiconductor-test equipment exceeded eighteen months, while Korean back-end suppliers moved from three-to-four-month delivery to six-to-eight months. Completed wafers can still be stranded. 24 July to 19 August
19. Tool Components. FPGAs inside test systems stretched from 8-10 weeks to as much as 52; pin-driver ICs exceeded ten weeks, and x86 processors reportedly tripled, delaying a large tester delivery by three months. July
20. Supplier Requests. Several tier-one tool suppliers reportedly asked SK hynix for 3-4% price increases, while at least one delivered 2026 equipment above prior-year prices. The percentages are requests, not implemented increases, but the completed delivery shows a five-year pricing convention starting to reverse. 10 June

Foundry and logic capacity

21. Leading-Edge Booking. TSMC's 3nm capacity remained severely constrained: the main compute die was scarce at the same time as older processes used for its support silicon. 30 June
22. Samsung Repricing. Reuters reported implemented 10-15% increases on Samsung's 4nm, 5nm and 8nm foundry services for Chinese and US customers; its Pyeongtaek 4nm line was full. 19 August
23. Eight-Inch Reset. The ten largest 200mm foundries approached 88% utilization, with Chinese lines full, while prices rose about 5-15% in the first half. This is one mature-node event across analog, power, display, industrial, and automotive chips, not separate utilization and price signs. 30 June
24. Support Silicon. Interposers, FPGAs, photonic ICs, integrated passives, NAND CMOS and HBM controller or base dies absorbed 28-65nm capacity. AI crowded the supposedly abundant processes around the accelerator. 30 June
25. Regional Repricing. Vanguard's earlier increase took effect in Q3, PSMC scheduled another round as HBM back-end work squeezed 300mm logic, and SMIC raised prices on its most sought-after capacity. Several Asian foundries formed one mature-node wave rather than three supplier entries. 8 June to 14 August

HBM, DRAM, NAND and storage components

26. Memory Lock-Up. Micron disclosed sixteen customer agreements carrying about $22 billion of deposits and commitments, including minimum volumes, take-or-pay obligations and price floors. Buyers accepted financing and price risk to secure bits. 24 June
27. Architecture Downgrade. Nvidia evaluated cutting Rubin Ultra from twelve-high to eight-high HBM stacks, then halved planned Vera SOCAMM capacity from 192GB to 96GB as HBM and LPDDR5X supply tightened. Two different architectures bent around unavailable memory, so they belong in one design-response sign. 10 June to 4 August
28. DRAM Reset. Conventional DRAM contract prices rose about 93-98% quarter-on-quarter from extremely low supplier inventories. The June baseline explains why every later allocation decision carried force. 1 June
29. Server Allocation. Incremental DRAM output went first to high-capacity server RDIMMs. Long-term customers received more moderate increases, while buyers outside LTAs paid the marginal price and some cloud customers kept building inventory after second-half requirements were contracted. 1 June to 9 July
30. Module Downsizing. Some server designs moved from 96GB and 128GB RDIMMs to 32GB and 64GB. The clearest shortage is sometimes the capacity removed from a finished machine. 9 July
31. Client Crowding. Suppliers shifted output toward servers, tightening both PC DRAM and mobile LPDDR even without a consumer-demand boom; GDDR6 and GDDR7 also stayed constrained after production lines moved to higher-value memory. Three client markets shared one deliberate capacity shift. 3 July
32. NAND Reset. NAND carried an estimated 4-5% physical deficit while suppliers raised contract prices materially through Q2. The balance estimate and the resulting price action are one phenomenon, not two. 21 July to 18 August
33. Enterprise SSD. Enterprise-SSD inventories reached historical lows, and Q1 contract prices rose roughly 80%. Data-center buyers paid markedly more for the subset of flash they needed. 11 June
34. Flash Bottlenecks. High-capacity QLC drives became a shortage within the shortage as AI data lakes concentrated demand in unusually large SSDs, while high-performance drives encountered a second choke point in controller DRAM. Securing NAND alone no longer guaranteed a shippable drive. 11 June to 3 July
35. NAND Rationing. Suppliers redirected output from phones and retail drives to enterprise SSDs and restricted open-market wafer availability. Small module houses and industrial buyers lost supply through both product-mix choice and explicit channel rationing. 3 July
36. Legacy Cascade. DDR4 cuts drove redesigns toward DDR3 and DDR2; DDR2 contract prices rose about 55-60% as a major producer reduced output. AI-era scarcity reached memory introduced two decades ago. 22 June
37. Industrial Retreat. Producers moved resources away from mature MLC and SLC NAND while NOR entered allocation. First-half NOR prices rose about 100-120%, SLC about 130-150%, and long-lived industrial, automotive and networking users lost economical sources. 16 June to 13 July

Packaging, substrates, PCBs and test

38. Substrate Squeeze. Large-format ABF and FC-BGA capacity tightened as accelerator packages grew in area and layer count. A larger substrate consumes more of each production panel. Ajinomoto's 6 August earnings call said its own raw-material costs had not risen, so the unsupported claim of a 30% ABF film increase is excluded. August
39. Substrate Guarantees. Large FC-BGA buyers reportedly offered prepayments, purchase guarantees or long-term agreements before suppliers allocated large-format capacity. The exceptional contract structure, not the contract value, reveals the shortage. August
40. CoWoS Gap. TSMC's CoWoS supply-demand gap remained near 20%; rapid capacity expansion was expected to narrow, not remove, it by year-end. More wafers simply moved the choke point into packaging. 15 June
41. Board Pricing. JLCPCB moved FR-4, flex, aluminum, copper, Rogers and Teflon boards to dynamic material quotations and introduced capacity allocation when orders exceeded production. One notice changed both price transmission and access, so it counts once. 26 June
42. Complex Boards. JLCPCB extended standard delivery for boards of six layers or more by about five days and raised resin-filled-via charges. The delay and price both arose from advanced-board complexity and belong together. 6 August
43. Probe Queue. MPI reported AI-chip probe-card lead times reaching six months. It later said supply remained tight and that it was considering customer prepayments for priority capacity. The six-month wait is observed; the prepayment was only under consideration and is not presented as completed. 31 March to 18 June
44. Molding Compound. Sumitomo Bakelite raised every SUMIKON EME epoxy-molding-compound grade 10-20% from 1 June, then announced a 30% China capacity expansion for generative-AI chips. The price letter cited Middle East feedstocks, so AI is a demand-side connection, not the stated cause of the increase. 14 May to 25 June
45. Connector Round. Amphenol's second 2026 letter reportedly put AI-server 224G lines near the top of a 5-15% range from 1 July, while Molex moved 5-30%. Buyer reports put some PCIe 6.0 and CXL connectors above $30 from under $10, with lead times rising from 8 to 36 weeks. Metals were the principal stated cost cause, while AI-server mix concentrated demand in the highest-priced lines. 28 May to 24 July

Optics and interconnect

46. Laser Sell-Out. Lumentum remained sold out through 2028 despite quadrupling output. This is finished optical-component scarcity downstream of the InP wafer constraint. 11 June
47. Fiber Squeeze. Chinese fiber lines ran at unusually high utilization, order books extended into early 2027, and delivery moved from weeks to months, approaching a year for less-protected buyers. Reported global prices stood about 70% above their 2021 trough. Loading, lead time and price are one fiber-market event. 1 to 10 June
48. Preform Delay. New fiber-preform capacity required roughly 18-24 months. More cable assembly cannot cure a shortage in the glass cylinders from which fiber is drawn. June
49. Fiber Crowding. Production shifted toward bend-insensitive G.657A fiber, tightening conventional G.652D used by telecom networks. Data-center mix changed availability for ordinary infrastructure. June
50. Cable Lock-Up. Molex reserved as much as ten years of Prysmian cable supply in a deal potentially worth EUR5.5 billion, including about EUR550 million upfront. Capacity was purchased years ahead. 20 July

Passives, analog and power chips

51. MLCC Scarcity. Specialist high-capacitance and high-voltage MLCCs reached 15-20 weeks, selected server grades five-to-ten months, and some specifications effectively zero inventory. Commodity capacity concealed a specialist shortage. 18 August
52. MLCC Repricing. Samsung Electro-Mechanics raised MLCC shipment prices 30% from 1 August, while Taiyo Yuden prepared another September increase. The implemented Samsung action establishes the price wave; the later supplier notice signals breadth, not another number. 29 July to 1 August
53. MLCC Contracts. AI-server MLCC purchasing moved into full-year 2027 agreements, unusual duration for components traditionally ordered nearer consumption. The contract structure revealed scarcity. June to July
54. Electrolytic Hike. Nichicon raised aluminum-electrolytic capacitor prices about 10-15% after orders for some products exceeded capacity; peers began following. The move is below the preferred 15-20% threshold at its lower end, so it supplies breadth rather than a claim of extraordinary magnitude. 18 June
55. Analog Wave. ST's third 2026 increase took effect 23 August after June and July rounds across ST, TI, NXP and Infineon. Reported cumulative automotive-MCU and power-device moves reached roughly 15-20%. 23 August
56. Power Waits. Selected power devices and STM32 MCUs reached 30-52-week factory lead times; some newer H7 parts moved from about 30 to 52 weeks during August. Price rises did not shorten the queue. August

Servers, networks, hosting and enterprise storage

57. Server Repricing. Large customers were reportedly told Nvidia-based servers would cost more than 15% more in many early-2027 configurations as memory costs surged. ODMs passed the notice through; it is not evidence of a higher assembly fee. 22 August
58. Long-Lead Silicon. Celestica said customers placed non-cancellable, non-refundable orders for long-lead silicon and arranged supply agreements for hard-to-find memory and printed-wiring boards. Risk moved upstream to the buyer. 27 July
59. Network Repricing. Ericsson said AI-driven memory costs were pressuring equipment economics and that it would raise new-tender prices and renegotiate increases into existing contracts. Cisco, Fortinet and Sophos supply corroborating vendor breadth, but not extra numbers. 14 July
60. Memory Surcharge. Ubiquiti revised a per-product memory surcharge across roughly 290 products from 1 July, adding dollars directly to each affected box, while Sophos raised XGS hardware and hardware-linked subscriptions 10%. The moves are mostly below the article's preferred magnitude, but they are unusually transparent component pass-throughs. 1 July
61. Network Lock-Up. Arista's non-cancellable multiyear purchase commitments reached about $9.7 billion, versus $3.6 billion a year earlier, as it secured memory and merchant silicon for AI networks. 4 August
62. Hosting Repricing. Hetzner repriced new orders and rescaling on 15 June because of massive procurement-cost increases. Its CCX13 dedicated-vCPU plan moved from EUR15.99 to EUR42.99 after an April round of increases up to 37%. 15 June
63. Colocation Squeeze. CBRE measured only 0.3% vacancy in Northern Virginia despite 33% inventory growth. Tight supply, demand and construction costs pushed global rents higher, including Hong Kong from $270 to $295 per kW-month. 19 August
64. Enterprise Storage. IBM's worldwide partner letter reset storage list prices from 1 April: DS8K arrays rose 35%, FlashSystem drives 30%, tape libraries 25% and some Ceph nodes far more. A UK Gold partner reported cumulative increases above 100% after another Q2 round. This is older client-channel evidence, but the prices remained operative in the main window. 2 March to June

Powering and building the data center

65. Build-Cost Reset. North American data-center development cost rose an average of 21% per MW from Cushman & Wakefield's prior guide, to about $17.6 million per MW, amid scarce power, trades and equipment. 20 August
66. Grid Take-or-Pay. Seven large AI companies agreed to fund generation, grid upgrades and unused reserved utility capacity. They pay even when they do not consume the power they reserve. 13 July
67. Capacity Backstop. Nvidia agreed to guarantee as much as $105 billion to help OpenAI lease an Ohio data center. A silicon supplier underwrote access to the physical site that would consume its chips. 17 August
68. Turbine Shock. GE Vernova priced first-half heavy-duty turbine orders 10-20 points higher per kW than Q4 2025. Only about 10GW remained uncommitted across 2029-30, while new orders were delivered around 2031. 22 July
69. Paid Queue. GE Vernova's 116GW contracted position comprised 53GW of firm backlog and 63GW of slot reservations; Siemens Energy also disclosed customer reservation fees. Buyers paid for production position before delivery and sometimes before final price. 22 July to 5 August
70. Transformer Queue. US substation and generator-step-up transformer lead times passed 160 weeks, with the largest units approaching four years as data centers competed with utilities. 13 August
71. Generator Queue. Data-center-scale standby generator sets moved beyond one-year delivery, with some production slots extending into 2028; orders increasingly carried allocation and escalation language. 11 to 24 August
72. Breaker Queue. Reuters reported that US high-voltage circuit-breaker lead times rose from 77 weeks in 2023 to 125 weeks in the second half of 2025. Wood Mackenzie said AI data-center construction was driving breaker and switchgear demand, keeping the physical shortage live in July. 9 July
73. Breaker Rationing. Mitsubishi Electric raised low-voltage breakers 30% and contactors 80% from 1 July, after capping April-to-June orders at three months of first-half 2025 volume. Post-December deliveries are billed at the new price regardless of order date. Metals, not AI, were the stated price cause, while data-center demand is part of the wider switchgear shortage. 1 April to 1 July
74. Procurement Waits. SourceBlue, Turner Construction's procurement arm, widened medium-voltage switchgear lead times from 30-44 to 28-48 weeks in Q2. Current maximums were 60 weeks for water-cooled chillers, 49 for air-cooled chillers, and 42 for UPS systems. These are contractor purchasing records, not market forecasts. 6 August
75. Chiller Prepay. A hyperscaler paid Modine $165 million upfront to reserve more than $4 billion of Airedale chiller capacity for 2027-29. Modine's filing confirms the payment and capacity agreement; reports based on leaked files identify Google and estimate about 3,500 three-megawatt chillers. 26 May, operative August
76. Capacity Cap. PJM's 14 July auction cleared at the $325/MW-day cap yet procured 6,831MW less than its reliability requirement. Its independent monitor attributed $6.3 billion of the $16.4 billion cost to data centers. This is a current shortfall plus an administered clearing price, not a forecast. 14 July
77. Johor Premium. Digital Edge agreed in April to pay about RM160 per square foot for 49.7 acres in Johor, 39% above a nearby 2025 transaction. By July, Knight Frank put Johor colocation vacancy at 0.7%. The land transaction is older and the premium derived, but the priced physical constraint remained visible in the main window. April to 30 July

Industrial and specialist equipment

78. Security Storage. Hikvision issued a dealer letter raising hard-drive prices from 1 July and confirmed that AI compute and storage demand had lifted Q3 storage costs; its Japan unit also revised prices for July orders. 15 June to 1 July
79. Camera Repricing. Dahua issued a 22 July price-adjustment letter citing SoC, memory, PCB and precious-metal costs. Dealers reported increases on part of the line reaching 50%; the company confirmed that prices changed but disputed that scale. 22 to 23 July
80. ADAS Pass-Through. BYD raised its God's Eye B driver-assistance option from RMB9,900 to RMB12,000, explicitly citing storage-hardware costs. The April action remained relevant as further Chinese smart-car repricing appeared in July. 28 April to July
81. NAS Downsizing. Synology's neo+ line launched with 4GB of non-ECC memory in flagship desktop shells that previously carried 8GB ECC. Its executive vice-president tied the change to memory-market shifts; Australian channel stock of the Plus line was also reportedly repriced 20-27%. 5 to 9 August
82. Power-Electronics Hike. Sinexcel raised its entire line 10-30% from 21 July, telling partners that memory, IGBTs, PCBs and passives had risen 50-800%, while metals rose 30-200%, leaving its old price system untenable. 10 to 21 July
83. Storage PCS. Inovance announced 5-15% increases on energy-storage converters and integrated systems for new orders from 30 August, citing PCB, chip and cell costs far beyond normal fluctuation. The action fell four days beyond the main window, so it is an announced continuation rather than a completed in-window increase. 7 August
84. RAM Surcharge. KUNBUS's Revolution Pi industrial computers still carried a temporary per-gigabyte RAM surcharge in August, raised on 2 April to as much as EUR70 on 8GB models after Raspberry Pi Compute Module prices rose sharply. 2 April, operative August
85. Cinema Squeeze. Blackmagic Design repriced roughly two dozen storage-bearing products in May. An 8TB Media Module rose 59% to $4,195, and an 80TB Cloud Store rose $17,000 to $48,995, while storage-free versions stayed flat. The company told dealers that flash had jumped four times and it was bidding against data centers for memory. 7 to 11 May, operative June to August
86. Till Shock. Diebold Nixdorf told investors that higher memory costs in electronic point-of-sale products remained a headwind and that it had responded with pricing, sourcing and other mitigation actions. No product percentage was disclosed, so this is issuer-confirmed pass-through, not a quantified price claim. 28 to 29 July

Consumer final goods

87. Preorder Downgrades. Framework raised 32GB LPCAMM2 from $439 to $800 and 64GB from $849 to $1,600, then reduced some paid 64GB preorders to 32GB and 32GB orders to 16GB. 22 July
88. Computers and Tablets. Apple lifted the 14-inch MacBook Pro from about $1,700 to $2,000 and the iPad Air from $600 to $750 as memory and storage costs outran what it would absorb; other PC vendors shortened quote validity and repriced configurations. 25 June
89. Phone Inflation. OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi raised Chinese handset prices by RMB200-500 as memory reached 40-50% of the bill of materials in low- and mid-range phones; brands also cut specifications and budget models. Indian retailers separately reported increases of 3-21%, and several named brands added INR3,000-5,000. 1 June
90. Console Compression. Microsoft added $100 to 512GB Xbox models and $150 to 1TB models while deleting the 2TB version, saying console memory and storage costs had risen more than 2.5 times. 25 June to 1 August
91. Gadget Retreat. Amazon raised Echo, Kindle, Fire TV and Eero prices by as much as 60% and removed some configurations; Pine64 halted several low-cost devices when DRAM and eMMC became uneconomic. 20 to 22 August
92. Storage Shock. Retail DDR5 reached about five times year-earlier levels, consumer SSDs roughly 2.2 times their earlier base, a 30TB enterprise SSD about $22,600, and nearline HDD output sold out through 2027. These are several products but one final-goods view of the same retail storage reset. 11 to 18 August
93. Quest Repricing. Meta raised every current Quest headset on 16 April, including Quest 3 by $100 to $599.99 and Quest 3S by $50, citing the global surge in critical component costs, specifically memory. The prices remained operative through August. 16 April

Software and model access

94. Peak Pricing. DeepSeek introduced peak and off-peak API pricing and raised V4-Pro and V4-Flash rates by 50-1,100% depending on model, token, and time. Scarce inference was priced by the hour. 13 to 17 August
95. Suite Repricing. Microsoft implemented worldwide commercial Microsoft 365 increases of 5-33% across named plans from 1 July after adding AI and security capabilities. Zoom separately put its new AI Productivity Suite at $10 per user per month, while Notion shifted advanced AI into paid plans and credits. These vendors described expanded capability, not silicon costs, so this is AI monetization entering traditional software prices rather than a proved scarcity pass-through. 1 June to 1 July
96. Access Retreat. GitHub moved Copilot to usage-based AI Credits on 1 June, making included use partly variable. Kimi and Ollama separately paused new high-usage subscriptions while adding capacity. The pattern anticipated in Software's Tollbooths continues: cheap unlimited access gives way to metering, paid tiers, smaller allowances and capacity gates. 1 June to 24 August

The shock reaches official statistics

97. US Consumer Transmission. US prices for computers, peripherals and smart-home assistants jumped 3.5% month on month and 3.9% year on year in July. The Federal Reserve linked the reversal in technology-price deflation to semiconductor demand from AI data-center construction. 12 August
98. US Producer Transmission. BLS producer-price data showed electronic components and accessories up 28.0% year on year in July, storage devices up 31.5% in June, and electronic computers up 2.7% in July alone. The shock was visible before the retail shelf. 13 August
99. Asian Transmission. Korea's overall export-price index rose 49.1% year on year in July, with electronics and optical products up 122.3%, DRAM 270.3% and flash 248.1%. Taiwan and the Bank of Japan recorded parallel technology-price pressure. 14 August
100. Bonus Transmission. The Bank of Korea warned that semiconductor-company performance bonuses could spread wage demands and inflation beyond IT. Special pay in the IT sector rose 60.6% year on year in Q1, against 2.1% elsewhere. The bank's later rate increase had several causes, so it is not presented as a semiconductor-caused decision. 17 June

What the hundred establish

The hundred are not a price index, and they should not be added, averaged, or treated as one homogeneous sample. Some are global markets; others are named contracts, products or customer letters. Some show a price, others a queue, redesign, allocation, or risk transfer. Their value is the repeated sequence across independent markets.

The shock starts before the fab, in financed wafer capacity and constrained chemicals. It moves through tools whose delivery speed is itself sold, foundry slots, memory contracts, substrates, test consumables and optics. It changes purchasing from ordinary orders into deposits, reservations, guarantees and take-or-pay commitments. It then crosses the data-center wall into transformers, breakers, chillers, land, industrial computers, tills, cameras, cars and cinema equipment.

At the consumer edge, firms use all three levers. They raise the sticker price, remove memory or storage, and withdraw products that are no longer economically viable. In software, they bundle AI into existing suites, meter what was previously included, create peak pricing, and close high-usage plans while capacity catches up. That does not prove every software increase was forced by silicon costs. It does show how the same expensive intelligence is being converted into a new tollbooth across both hardware and services.

The most important aspect is that price cascades are spreading, something underestimated even by top-line optimists like us. Those who expect relief on account of expected supply floods are ignoring the cost-push aspects and the new supplier-purchaser power dynamics. The pessimists who believe in the thesis, and as a reason expect an aggregate demand adjustment, overlook the forces of token inequality at play amid surprisingly strong AI utility, in our view. If we are not overly biased, what we list here will have repercussions for many years ahead, and not just a one-time impact.

That is the silicon shock.