Legal risk / Jul 3, 2026 / 4 min
Plaintiffs Say HBM Pivot Hid a DRAM Price Fix
On June 25, seventeen U.S. consumers and small computer businesses sued Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron in Northern California — alleging the AI industry's HBM pivot became a coordinated cover to choke DDR3 and DDR4 supply and drive conventional DRAM prices up roughly 700% in four years, one week before SK hynix begins Nasdaq book-building for a record $29 billion ADR.
The same trio that pleaded guilty to DRAM price-fixing in 2005 now faces a civil Sherman Act complaint arguing their AI-era HBM pivot was a coordinated excuse to choke legacy memory — and the case lands one week before SK hynix starts Nasdaq book-building on a record $29 billion ADR.
The filing: Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics, docketed June 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (5:26-cv-06345) and assigned to Judge Noel Wise. Seventeen plaintiffs — fourteen consumers and three small PC businesses including Troy's Computers and My Florida PC — seek class certification, injunctive relief, and treble damages under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
What they allege:
- Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron control roughly 90% of global DRAM and used the shift to high-bandwidth memory for AI as cover to cut DDR3 and DDR4 output
- Conventional DRAM prices rose about 700% over four years per the complaint — plaintiffs cite Apple's Mac and iPad price hikes as downstream harm
- No new entrant can build a $10-billion fab fast enough to fill the gap when all three incumbents pivot together
The defendants' side: None has filed a formal response. All three publicly say they operate independently, reallocating capacity toward higher-margin HBM to meet AI demand. Micron locked in $100 billion in take-or-pay contracts through 2030. Jefferies forecasts DRAM prices rising another 40–50% in Q3 2026 and 30–40% in Q4, with little relief before 2028 — numbers that support real scarcity, not necessarily collusion.
Why courts will fight back: Sherman Act Section 1 bans agreements to restrain trade — not parallel business decisions. The Ninth Circuit dismissed a near-identical Hagens Berman class action in March 2022, ruling plaintiffs "do not allege additional facts that push their theory over the line between possibility and plausibility." The court found simultaneous production cuts in a three-firm market looked like lawful conscious parallelism.
Why history cuts both ways: Samsung pleaded guilty in 2005 and paid a $300 million criminal fine; Hynix — SK hynix's predecessor — paid $185 million. Micron cooperated with that DOJ probe and avoided a corporate fine, though a regional sales manager later pleaded guilty to obstruction. Total industry fines exceeded $645 million. Plaintiffs hope the HBM pivot supplies the "something more" the 2018 case lacked. Nobody has proved it yet.
The market clock: On July 3, Seoul's KOSPI rebounded 5.76% as SK hynix jumped 10.88% after Thursday's 15% plunge on Meta's "excess compute" scare. Book-building for SK hynix's Nasdaq debut under ticker SKHY begins July 6, with trading targeted July 10 — the largest ADR offering ever if it prices at the top of the range. A discovery fight over capacity allocation arrives exactly when Wall Street needs a clean narrative.
Convina's view: Silicon Valley debates whether Meta overbuilt GPUs; Main Street just sued the trio that makes the wafer your laptop cannot live without. The complaint may fail — courts already told these defendants that moving in lockstep is not illegal. But filing while Jefferies forecasts another 40% quarterly price spike and SK hynix is raising $29 billion on Nasdaq forces a question the AI boom keeps dodging: is the shortage physics, or is a 90% oligopoly rationing the rest of the economy on purpose? Washington is busy vetting GPT-5.6 guest lists. Antitrust just asked for the fab logs.