BREAKING: One Google update and an oil war just wiped out $450 billion from memory stocks.

The entire growth story for Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and Sandisk was built on one assumption: AI demand for memory would keep scaling forever.

Every analyst had buy ratings. Every fab had orders through 2026 and beyond. The memory supercycle was supposed to be unstoppable.

Then Google released TurboQuant, an algorithm that reduces the amount of memory AI models need to run by 6x. Investors immediately started pricing in the question nobody in the memory industry wants to answer: if AI needs 6x less memory, why does anyone need to keep buying more chips?

And before the sector could recover, the Iran war made it worse.

Samsung and SK Hynix manufacture the majority of the world's memory chips in South Korea. South Korea gets 81% of its total energy from imported fossil fuels.

The Strait of Hormuz closure sent energy costs surging, hitting fab operating costs directly and compressing the margins that made these stocks worth buying in the first place.

And it caused one of the biggest crash in memory stocks.

- Micron down 30%, wiping out $172 billion
- Sandisk down 25%, wiping out $20 billion
- Samsung down 18%, wiping out $168 billion
- SK Hynix down 18%, wiping out $87 billion