TechFlow News, March 30: According to Sina News, memory module prices plummeted sharply starting last week. The daily decline for mainstream 16GB memory modules exceeded RMB 100. Wholesalers widely attributed this to concentrated selling by large-scale hoarders who had previously stockpiled inventory. As prior price increases had been excessive, market sales volume has already declined by over 60% compared to levels before November last year; insufficient demand further intensified the pressure to sell off inventory.
Meanwhile, Google unveiled a new compression algorithm named “TurboQuant,” which reduces runtime key-value cache memory consumption for large language models by at least 60%. Market expectations for AI hardware demand have consequently been revised downward. According to the Financial Times, U.S. memory chip stocks lost nearly USD 100 billion in market capitalization this week due to this development. Micron Technology’s share price has fallen 15% since last Friday alone, wiping out over USD 70 billion in market value.
