Can The Bubble Burst Already?
We’re a month and a half into 2026 and the enshittification of everything technology related continues to get worse thanks to AI. This is historically the worst time ever to be in the market for new products. Memory prices have almost finished doubling in a short period of time. Flash storage hikes followed in lockstep. The duopoly of dominant GPU manufacturers are also raising prices. Power supplies, integrated circuits, and solutions which require either of these elements are the next on the list based on warnings from Infineon. Does this mean there will be a surplus of available CPU’s which may be discounted to offset everything else being more expensive? NOPE!
The impact to the wallet is further exacerbated by rising operational costs related to power. Even if you’re one of the fortunate few with the means (and luck, courtesy of a lottery-style purchasing process) to snag an MSI RTX 5090 Lightning and equally top-shelf components for your no-holds-barred gaming setup, the amount of juice being sucked down by such a premium gaming rig is going to hit hard at the end of the month. All of this pain and knock-on shortage declarations are courtesy of the AI hype machine.
Steve Burke over at Gamers Nexus summed it up succinctly in video form. No need to reinvent the wheel here.
Even the trickle down flow of gently-used enterprise equipment market for homelabbing and self-hosting isn’t immune to these price hikes. Used hard drives, often a key element in the cost equation of self-hosting massive media libraries or similar bulk-storage use cases, have been produced and fulfilled their initial purpose yet are becoming harder to find at a notable discount versus brand-new equipment. Multiple generations-old desktops, which used to come with fairly generous memory appointments, are being partially stripped of their capacities as there’s greater profit for the refurbisher or reseller to part out some of the original resources.
Until the AI bubble deflates or pops (your viewpoint and desired outcome will be based on your perception and opinion of AI – no wrong answers), any near-term purchases ranging from computers to TVs to cars will be a race against time. Are you able to get what you need and can realistically afford before existing inventory is depleted? Are you willing to wait and pay the ever-increasing “AI Tax” to have the latest and greatest? Should you consider taking advantage of these exponential price hikes and do some “spring cleaning” to convert desired components (memory, SSDs, etc.) into profit versus what was paid roughly six months ago or longer? Take stock and make moves before things get worse. The potential for circa-2020 shortages on something you may need to replace is a possible reality.
Until the first domino falls in the circular AI economy, we’re all going to be held hostage and knocked down at least one rung on the financial ladder.