There is a simple and easy way to understand why this AI revolution is making investors money hand over foot.
And it’s got nothing to do with Nvidia. Not Meta, not Google, not Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, xAI, in fact, none of Elon’s companies.
It’s not about nuclear, it’s not about energy, it’s not about critical metals, or any executive order that Trump has signed off on.
If you want to really understand the impact the AI boom is having, and how you can make money from it, all you need to be is a computer geek.
That’s it. That’s how simple it can be.
Let me prove it to you…
369% in nine months
At the start of March this year I decided to build my own custom PC.
That’s it. It’s a decent rig, certainly not a $10,000 locally AI running beast, but more than enough for seamless gaming, a lot of web tabs, and multiple applications all running at once.
You kind of get an indication of its ability with the fact it’s running at least five applications and two dozen browser tabs with a 7% CPU effort.
Anyway…
Here’s the list of components I used:
- AMD’s Ryzen 5 9600X CPU
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
- Gigabyte AORUS Elite motherboard
- 32GB Kingston Fury Beast (2x 16GB) DDR5 SDRAM
- Crucial 2TB M.2 SSD
There are a few other minor details used for power, liquid cooling, etc. But those are the important things.
And of those, there’s one in particular that really emphasises how significant the AI boom is.
And… it’s not the Nvidia GPU.
It’s the DDR5 memory.
You see in March, I paid $149 for that 32GB of memory.
One hundred and forty-nine dollars.
Now let me show you something…
See that?
That’s today’s prices. For the exact same memory. That’s a 369% price rise in nine months.
What’s nuts about that is that about a month ago, it was $599.
I expect by January I’ll be needing to fork out nearly $1,000 for the same amount of memory.
To further demonstrate the near vertical price moves of memory, just look at two of the world’s biggest memory makers, Micron (NASDAQ:MU) and SK Hynix (KOR:000660) over the past year.
Fair to say the rise in DDR5 memory costs is directly translating to the Profit & Loss statements of these two giants, and their stock price.
Memory is easily one of the best trades for 2025.
Thankfully this isn’t something we’re late to the party with, in fact across the board, we’ve been one step ahead of major shifts in the AI boom from things like memory through to AI infrastructure, and even critical metals which are the fundamental building blocks of every aspect of this AI boom.
SpaceX or SK Hynix? I know what I’d choose
I’ve written about both of these companies over the years, and one of the things that continuously keeps coming back is that Micron is great because you can invest in the stock on US markets, but what about SK Hynix?
The problem with SK Hynix is it’s a Korean listed stock.
That’s great if you’re in Korea… not so great if you’re in the UK.
There aren’t many UK brokers that provide access to the Korean stock market. Now, that’s a big problem with global stock investing anyway, and something the massive tokenisation theme aims to solve, but more on that for another day.
Because of this Korean listing that most UK brokers don’t allow access to, that means that on the balance of things, UK investors are missing out on one of the greatest AI-boom companies in the world.
That just doesn’t seem right, does it?
Good news though, this week the newswires started reporting that SK Hynix is looking at a potential US listing.
This makes sense for them, it opens up a far bigger market to raise capital, a huge contingent of investors looking to invest in one of the world’s best AI related companies and ultimately that’s going to be a boost to the stock price… on the proviso the wicked demand for memory continues on its current trajectory too.
Although reports I’ve seen suggest that OpenAI and Sam Altman have basically cornered and booked out the entire DRAM market just to feed the ChatGPT beast.
So that’s also likely a big part of all this going down. Pray to God that OpenAI isn’t a house of cards…
Anyway, on the assumption it’s not and the AI boom is here to stay, at least for several more years, a SK Hynix listing could be one of the most exciting US listings of recent memory.
It comes at a time when I also saw reports that SpaceX is raising $30 billion on a $1.5 trillion potential IPO valuation to launch in 2026… so expect that to dominate IPO headlines for the foreseeable future.
But for me, if you’re thinking about mega IPOs/US listings and you’re tossing up something like SpaceX or SK Hynix.
Well, I only need to glance to my left and look at my PC to figure out which one I’d prefer to back for the bigger potential upside.
Until next time,
Sam Volkering
Contributing Editor, Investor’s Daily
