Micron announced another $50 billion in US manufacturing, bringing its planned total to $250 billion through 2035, with facilities in New York, Idaho and Virginia.
The timeline is the most important part of the announcement. Nine years separate the decision from the projected total, which describes precisely why the memory shortage can't be solved with money in the short term: a semiconductor fab isn't contracted like a server.
In that interval, anyone needing memory keeps competing for the capacity that already exists. That's what pushed laptop makers to accept alternative suppliers and drove pricing back to where it stood nearly two decades ago.
Similar moves happened in the same period elsewhere, with billions of euros committed to European production, a new Korean fab accelerated, and India entering commercial packaging production. It's a geographic redistribution answering both demand and political risk.
For buyers, the practical effect of these builds arrives at the turn of the decade. Until then, the variable setting price is how much capacity exists today and who reserved it first.