CapEx is just Memory Tax Now, Deepseek V4 NAND impact

The hyperscaler memory tax quarter.

More CapEx? Pssh. We knew flops needed scaling.

But $25B at Microsoft alone just to pay higher component prices? 

A memory tax. That's the news.

NAND? Sold out. HBM? Sold out.

What we cover:

• SanDisk revenue +97% sequential.
• 78% gross margin. Guidance above 80% next quarter.
• Samsung HBM4 first to ship. Demand outstripping supply.
• DeepSeek v4 goes SSD-centric. KV cache offloads to flash.
• Microsoft: $25B of 2026 CapEx is just memory pricing.
• Jassy: memory shortage pushes on-prem to AWS.
• Qualcomm: mystery custom ASIC. Ships December.

New Semi Doped with @vikramskr and @austinsemis.
Check out our Substacks
- https://www.viksnewsletter.com/ 
- https://www.chipstrat.com/

Chapters:
0:00 Intro and Vik goes full-time
5:15 Earnings week: the memory tax
7:26 Samsung HBM4 and the Gbps race
14:42 Is the memory tax worth it?
17:37 SanDisk and the SunDisk origin
23:22 78% gross margins and 5-year supply lock-ins
29:29 DeepSeek v4 and SSD-centric inference
38:49 Hyperscaler CapEx and the cloud pull
42:49 AI accelerators: TPU, Trainium, MTIA