The biggest misconception in the semiconductor industry is that designing AI chips is the pinnacle of engineering difficulty, but memory has proven far more difficult to master and resistant to new entrants. Companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Open AI and countless startups are developing their own AI accelerators, creating the impression that semiconductor design has become democratized. However, after decades of consolidation, the world’s advanced DRAM market is still dominated by only three companies, and the number of suppliers mass-producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) remains exactly the same. Most companies developing logic chips rely on foundries such as TSMC to manufacture them, lowering the barrier to entry. In contrast, advanced DRAM production is based on the integrated device manufacturer (IDM) model, where companies must master every layer of production themselves, including capacitor formation, cell architecture, leakage control, lithography integration, process chemistry, defect management, refresh optimization, reliability engineering, and manufacturing yield, as there is no equivalent of a “TSMC for DRAM.”