Nvidia has locked in $279 billion of multi-year purchase commitments, mostly for high-bandwidth memory, reshaping who wins and loses across the chip sector. Memory makers rallied while AMD slid, and Nvidia itself guided lower gross margins as it pays up to secure supply.
Nvidia has locked up $279 billion in multi-year purchase commitments, with memory as the primary target. That marks a 135% jump from the prior quarter. In a market where supply, not demand, has become the bottleneck, Nvidia is buying up the bottleneck itself. AMD shares dipped 1.87% on the news, while memory makers rallied.
Nvidia treats memory access as existential
Nvidia's FY2027 Q2 earnings, reported August 26, 2026, showed the company acting more like a commodity buyer securing raw materials than a chip designer ordering parts. The $279 billion commitment is mostly for high-bandwidth memory (HBM). Nvidia is reportedly evaluating downgrades from 12-Hi to 8-Hi HBM4 stacks for its Rubin Ultra architecture to stretch a constrained die pool and ship more accelerators.
Memory makers gain pricing power
The Asian supply chain reacted predictably. SK Hynix gained 2.49% in Seoul, while its Nasdaq-listed shares rose 1.18%. Samsung Electronics climbed 2.49% too, as both companies hold the keys to HBM production. Micron fell 2.78% to $912.34 despite the tailwind, a sell-the-news reaction after a 674% one-year run.
Compute rivals get squeezed
AMD dropped 1.87% to $471.95, and the pressure looks structural rather than cyclical. When Nvidia pre-pays for memory years in advance, AMD must compete for leftover capacity at spot prices. The Jefferies Semiconductor Conference confirmed the dynamic: Nvidia has moved to secure substrates, DRAM, and other critical inputs, making supply the main constraint for compute companies generally. ARK Investment Management sold 37,977 AMD shares on August 26 while buying Broadcom and Cerebras.
Nvidia's own margins take the hit
Nvidia guided Q4 gross margins down to 71-72% as higher memory prices take full effect. Margins are expected to recover toward 72-73% in FY2028. It's an acknowledgment that memory suppliers, not Nvidia, now capture a larger share of the AI value chain. The Nasdaq roster of chipmakers is splitting into clear winners and losers as the industry shifts from a demand-constrained paradigm to a supply-constrained one.
Source: Investing.com
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