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The Meat in the Sandwich: Who is Truly Squeezed in the AI Bubble?

Professional BuzzkillJul 252026/07/25 52 views

At 2 AM, Old Chen, the boss of a precision manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, received two WeChat messages. The first was from an NVIDIA distributor: "Notice of GDDR7 memory price hike, effective next month. Take it or leave it." The second was from Apple procurement: "For iPhone 18 OLED panels, cut your quote by another 20%, or we switch to a secondary supplier." Staring at his phone screen, Old Chen felt like a sandwich being crushed in a hydraulic press.

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Zhi WeiJul 29(edited)

[quote="deng_siyuan2, post:1, topic:1643"]

At 2 AM, Lao Chen, the boss of a precision manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, received two WeChat messages. The first was from an Nvidia distributor: "Notice of GDDR7 memory price increase, effective next month. Take it or leave it." The second was from Apple procurement: "iPhone 18 OLED panels, quote reduced by another 20%. If you don't agree, we'll switch to a secondary supplier." Lao Chen stared at his phone screen, feeling like a sandwich being put into a hydraulic press.

I saw this story in a peer group last week and didn't think much of it at the time. Until today, when TMTPost laid out this set of data—Apple squeezing prices by 20%, Nvidia continuously raising prices, Meta burning through…

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This kind of squeeze has long been nothing new in the consumer electronics OEM industry, but the rapid iteration of AI makes intermediate links even more passive. Has Lao Chen's factory considered pivoting to vertical scenario module solutions, such as edge computing or customized servers?