crisis

The ERE of 750 workers confirms the profitability crisis of delivery in Spain

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Glovo has opened the consultation period for an Employment Regulation File that will affect a maximum of 750 delivery workers in more than 60 locations throughout Spain: The official reason is that the distribution model with employees is not profitable in a large part of the territory. However, unions like CCOO had months denouncing that the company was already carrying out a “covert ERE” through a continuous trickle of disciplinary dismissals under questionable justifications. Why is it important. This decision comes just eight months after Glovo will complete its adaptation to the Rider Lawregularizing the delivery drivers who until then worked as self-employed. This adjustment shows the platform’s difficulties in sustaining a profitable logistics model once forced to abandon the self-employed scheme and assume the labor costs of the Workers’ Statute. The background. Glovo was the last major platform to comply with the Rider Law, which was approved in 2021, but its effective application was in fits and starts, between fines and institutional pressure. In July 2025, The company regularized its delivery drivers (more than 13,000 throughout Spain) in the face of the imminent threat of criminal proceedings, which opened the door to prison sentences for its leadership for widespread fraud. What Glovo had to give up then is cutting now. Between the lines. The company does not directly blame the Rider Law. It points out that its direct logistics management model, the so-called Gen2, “has proven to be inefficient” in small and medium-sized municipalities, and that it is necessary to move to the Gen1 model, in which Glovo does not assume the delivery operation. Translated: where the volume of orders is not sufficient to cover the costs of having permanent employees, the platform transitions to a model of marketplace (Gen1). That is, Glovo continues to operate the application and collect commissions, but the logistics of delivery are now assumed by the restaurants themselves or subcontracted companies. In figures: 750 delivery workers affected by the ERE. More than 60 locations where service will be reduced or eliminated. And more than 800 cities where Glovo operations continue normally. The big question. Now the underlying debate is not whether Glovo complies with the law or not (now, without a doubt, it complies with it), but whether the delivery whose model he proposes can be sustainable with a workforce of employees in markets where orders do not have the volume that exists in large cities. In addition, COVID triggered home delivery consumption to levels that have since normalized, and platforms have been searching for years for the balance point that allows them to make money without resorting to questionable working conditions. In many corners of Spain, that point has not yet appeared. Yes, but. Yolanda Díaz has responded to the announcement by rejecting any “blackmail” and promising that the Labor Inspection will ensure compliance with the law. You are right that the law must be followed. But the ERE that Glovo has announced does not breach it: reducing activity where there is no business is a legitimate decision. The underlying problem lies in the structural change of the sector: the delivery was born and based its profitability on a model of self-employed workers, a formula that Glovo defended to the end, arguing for the flexibility of the service. Now, the real challenge is to demonstrate whether the business remains economically viable when platforms must assume the structural costs of a salaried workforce, as required by current legislation. Featured image | Nursultan Abakirov In Xataka | The death of cooking at home: inviting to “dinner” is increasingly becoming inviting to order by Glovo

If the solution to the housing crisis in Spain is “building taller buildings”, Alcalá de Henares has taken it seriously

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If you want to solve your residential deficit and stop the upward spiral of prices, Madrid needs housing. tens of thousands of housing, if we trust the calculations carried out by the real estate sector. With that backdrop in the capital (as in other points of the country) has opened a debate: Should we look up? That is to say, if houses are needed and the buildable land is what it is, has the time come? replant the height of buildings, both in established neighborhoods and in new real estate developments? In Alcalá there are those who believe so. In fact, the birthplace of Cervantes has started the countdown to provide one of the tallest skyscrapers in the community, a tower of almost 30 levels. What has happened? That Alcalá de Henares seems to have unblocked an ambitious real estate project that it had been years on the table: a tower that, once completed, will become one of the tallest residential buildings in the Community of Madrid. The news has revealed it the company Ten Brinke, which has partnered with Invesco Real Estate to carry out the operation. Although not many details of the project have been revealed, it is known that the building will be around 30 floors and will exceed the 300 homeswhich will redefine the skyline of the city and will surpass La Garena, an office tower 17 floors and 71.7 m which now dominates the town’s skyline. There are those who now slide that the new construction will be the first residential skyscraper in Alcalá de Henares and one of the few in the Community of Madrid that exceeds 25 heights. What do we know about the project? In the statement In which he announces the “closing of the operation”, Ten Brinke slips a couple of clues about the future property: it will be residential, it will exceed 300 homes and will have 28 levels in total, a sum of 25 floors in height, the ground floor and two underground levels. Furthermore, Ten Brike clarifies that the developers will bet on a “product mix” formula, including family housing, premium apartments and “spaces aimed at modern living.” Regarding deadlines, he states that the works will start “in the coming weeks”, without outlining a delivery schedule. Has anything else transpired? In recent days the Madrid press has pointed out various details to adults, such as that the objective is for the homes to be used for rental marketthat the tower will be around the 80 meters high and that will be located in the Francisco Anton streetnext to the new GAL neighborhood. The SER chain assures that the project has actually been licensed since 2021. A few years ago was announced an ambitious residential development, the Tower (or garden) Cervantes, with buildings 25 stories high. The Idealista portal even reached advertise The apartments, which were offered from 256,000 euros and also stood out for their common areas, with more than 15,000 m2 of gardens and recreational areas that included an outdoor pool. At that time (2024) the idea was to deliver the first keys towards the summer of 2027. Why is it important? Beyond the relevance of the project and its impact on the Complutense skyline, the tower is important because it will inject 300 new homes in a town that has seen how rents and the price per m2 have become more expensive in recent years, in line with the rest of Madrid. According to the Idealista portal, in February the m2 It cost €2,74419.3% more than in the same month last year. Regarding the rent, the m2 It was rented for €13.7which represents an annual increase (February 2025) of about 12%. The municipality has also seen its registry grow in recent years, going from 193,751 registered in 2018 to more than 203,200 residents, according to the tables of the INE. Images | Ten Brinke In Xataka | Madrid is discovering that there is something more controversial than the ‘tazo’ of garbage: where the hell to put a canton of garbage

In 2022, the gas crisis skyrocketed the price of electricity in Spain. In 2026 we have a “green shield” but also a serious problem

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Just when in Spain we began to breathe a sigh of relief, convinced that we had overcome the inflationary trauma of 2022 “after cutting energy ties” with Russia, history repeats itself. This week a “black Monday” began that has shaken international markets. This time the epicenter is not in eastern Europe, but in the Persian Gulf, after the recent attacks that have been forced to paralyze QatarEnergy facilities. The impact on our country has been devastating. According to data collected in OMIEthe price of electricity in the wholesale market has jumped 60% in just 24 hours, climbing to 90.14 euros per megawatt hour (MWh). To put it in perspective, this represents a 1,300% increase in price compared to what we paid just a month ago. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has already warned that We must prepare for a “long war” with serious global economic consequences. And the fear is already palpable in the street with the long lines that yesterday we observed of drivers trying to fill their tank at gas stations low cost before prices continue to rise. If the gas goes up, why does the electricity go up? To understand why a conflict thousands of kilometers away makes our electricity more expensive almost instantly, you have to look at how our system works. As explained The Confidential in a very didactic way: the European electricity market is “marginalist”. This means that the most expensive technology that needs to be used to cover the demand of a specific day is the one that sets the final price of all energy. If the sun or wind is not enough and the gas plants have to be turned on, all electricity is paid for at the price of gas. And the gas, right now, is trapped in a war funnel. As we have already explained these days20% of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 25% of the world’s oil transit through the Strait of Hormuz (the epicenter of the current tension). Any threat of a blockade in that area generates a domino effect that triggers reference prices in Europe. The energy expert Joaquín Coronado explained in LinkedIn that this panic is already real: The prices of electricity futures for the rest of 2026 have suddenly risen by 24%. As he himself points out, “only the price of gas has changed,” but that is enough to drag down the entire system. The hit in the pocket. All this macroeconomics lands directly in the bank account of citizens. As pointed out The Countrythere are more than 11 million users in Spain who have regulated rates (the PVPC for electricity and the TUR for gas) who will notice this increase almost immediately, since their contracts reflect the daily fluctuations of the market. The calculations about what this crisis is going to cost us are already on the table: The OCU, in statements to The Newspaperestimates that if these prices are maintained, the average electricity bill with a regulated rate will jump from the 62 euros we paid in February to around 82 euros in March. An increase of 30% in a single month. A platform report Roams figures the monthly impact about 12 euros extra for electricity (17% more) and increases of up to 18% on the gas bill. The worst scenario is drawn the comparator Selectra: If the conflict drags on and we return to the panic levels of 2022, the electricity bill could skyrocket by 200%. But energy is just the first domino. Financial Times collect warnings from the chief economist of the European Central Bank (ECB), who already assumes a short-term rebound in general inflation. As oil rises, transportation rises: from fuel at the pump (gas stations already assume extra costs of 12 cents per liter) to maritime freight of goods and plane tickets, which on some routes to Asia have quadrupled in price. So, are we the same as in 2022? The good news is that we are not exactly at the same starting point as when the Ukrainian war broke out. As analyzed elDiario.esSpain today has three “mattresses” that cushion the first impact: the arrival of spring (which reduces the use of heating), some reservoirs 83% full (which allow generate a lot of hydroelectric energy cheap) and an electric mix where more than 50% of energy is already renewable. Furthermore, the PVPC formula was recently renovated so that it does not depend only on the daily market, softening the extreme peaks a little. The bad news is that we have exchanged one problem for another. To stop depending on Russia, we throw ourselves into the arms of the United States. As the economist José Carlos Díez warns in the chain Vibe Zero44% of the gas we consume today comes from the US. This places us in a position of extreme vulnerability to the new geopolitical “black swan”: the anger of Donald Trump. The refusal of the Spanish Government to give up the military bases of Rota and Morón for the offensive against Iran has caused Trump to threaten to cut off all trade with Spain. If the United States turns off the tap on LNG ships, José Carlos Díez warnsSpain does not have the physical capacity or infrastructure to replace a supplier that gives us almost half of our gas from one day to the next. The social shield and our pending duties. Faced with the threat of the crisis becoming entrenched, the Government is already moving. According to Expansion, If the conflict lasts more than four weeks, Pedro Sánchez’s Executive has on the table reactivating the “social shield” of previous crises: reductions in VAT on electricity, fuel discounts and direct aid. However, fiscal patches do not hide the underlying problems. In Xataka We have put our finger on two great absurdities of our system. On the one hand, we are an “energy island” since we have seven regasification plants capable of receiving ships from all over the world and helping Europe, but we do … Read more

In the midst of the RAM and SSD crisis, there are those who are launching laptops and mobile phones with more capacity at the same price: Apple

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Apple has set out to eclipse the Mobile World Congress. He does not attend the Barcelona fair, but he has presented products. For now, the iPhone 17ethe new MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro and M5 Max processorsthe new MacBook Air M5 and the renewal of your monitor Studio Display. And what has caught my attention the most is the “generosity” of an Apple that has not accustomed us to it. Because, with the one that is falling with the RAM crisis and of SSD priceApple is offering more without increasing the price. And it is something that has several readings… and some asterisks. The new devices. There isn’t much new in anything the company has presented so far. It is assumed that there is still a ‘cheap’ MacBook throughout this Wednesday, March 4, but what they have already presented is, basically, the same as last year, but with new processors. The iPhone 17e is a mobile phone with an outdated design, but it includes a slightly cut version of the processor of the iPhone 17 Pro. The MacBook Pros were already beasts in many ways and now they can be equipped with the M5 Pro and M5 Max that reach absurd figures for GPU capacity and memory bandwidth in the most powerful versions. And the MacBook Air was already a very interesting device for mobility, but now also somewhat more powerful. As I say, not much new on the front, until we look at the storage. With the one that is falling… At this point, no one is aware that we are experiencing an unprecedented component crisis. It’s not like 2020, when a bunch of factors caused a global chip crisis. Now there is only one “culprit”: artificial intelligence. There is three main companies that manufacture memory (Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung), and the three have focused almost the entire his production to memories for AI. This is causing not only us to have to pay more to be able to buy RAM or an SSD for our PC, but also the manufacturers themselves are changing their device launch plans –the steam machine-, there is someone who is selling laptops without RAM or without SSDwho looks to Chinese manufacturers to see if they can find a solution or, directly, those who can withdraw from the market. And, in the middle of that hurricane, Apple (which It is not characterized by its popular prices), launches devices. And the surprise came. Generosity. I’m not going to explain much, I’m just going to give some information: The iPhone 17e starts with 256 GB of storage and costs 709 euros. He iPhone 16e It started at 128 GB and cost 709 euros. The MacBook Air M5 costs 1,199 euros with 512 GB of SSD. He MacBook Air M4 It cost the same at launch, 1,199 euros (in October last year they lowered it by 100 euros to 1,099 euros), but with 256 GB. On these devices, Apple has doubled the storage while maintaining the price. And not only that: the Studio Display XDR was sold with a basic tilt adjustment stand, but you could purchase the articulated arm that allowed you to adjust both angle and height. The price of support? 999 euros, which became a meme. Now, the new Studio Display XDR It comes with that ‘Pro’ support included. Of course, the base MacBook Pro M5 costs 100 euros more with a 1 TB SSD instead of 512 GB. Generosity? What is happening here, is the first thing I thought when I started analyzing the price. There are several options that can be compatible… and even all at the same time. No company is there to give away, so it is simply possible that they have a huge stock of 512 GB SSDs that they now mount as a base in their computers. This would make sense if we take into account the very high price of expanding the memory on an Apple device. The most basic option would be the most chosen, so those with 128 GB on mobile phones and 256/512 on MacBooks would be the best sellers and, therefore, have a surplus of the expanded options that fewer people would opt for. Another reading may be that, due to the high price of the devices, Apple decides to absorb part of the cost of RAM because it’s still worth itmaking money per device sold and expanding the Mac user base at a time when Windows laptops can have a very difficult time. What Apple saves are the chargers in its new equipment. The MacBook Pro no longer included a charger, but the MacBook Air did. Now not even that. The turn. The other option is that… it will be our turn. The prices that I have detailed are in euros and for Spain if we take into account the launch price, without subsequent offers or reductions. In the United States, things are very different. They have also doubled the storage, but the MacBook Air in its 13 and 15-inch versions now They are 100 dollars more expensive than the previous generation. It is always complicated because direct conversions cannot be made from the US price to the European price (in fact, the M5 MacBook Air costs $1,099 and $1,299 compared to our 1,199 euros and 1,499 euros), but we may simply have to face that price increase in 2027 models. Because, unfortunately, the RAM crisis is going to last a long time. Intel He thinks he has the rest of the decade ahead of him, NVIDIA does not have good forecasts either and Samsung has just said that, if that, it will begin to ease in 2027. Images | Apple, Samsung In Xataka | Apple has been the industry’s first customer for decades. AI is relegating it to the background

The RAM crisis is great for those who manufacture it. There are those who think that a tsunami will sink many others

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Looking at current technology is peering into a well of contrasts. On the one hand, the optimism of companies that push the narrative of a future supported by AI while spend tens of billions of dollars. On the other hand, the consequences for the consumer segment are a new component crisis. Nobody likes pessimism, but unfortunately the market does not bring good news, and the CEO of Phison has a clear message: Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. And that means that the RAM crisis It is going to take away some technology companies… in all sectors. In short. RAM and SSDs are the components that best exemplify the cost of data centers. They are elements that They have increased the price a real outrage and are made up of NAND flash chips. It is where the information is stored, but even those components need a ‘brain’, and that is where Phison comes into play. This Taiwanese company is one of the most powerful when it comes to creating something very specific: memory controllers. They are responsible for managing access, reading, writing and deleting data from NAND memory, among other tasks. Without them, these components could not function, so it is evident that Phison is interested in continuing to inflate the market. But its CEO, Pua Khein-Seng, has made it clear in a recent interview that this boom in data centers and artificial intelligence will have a disastrous consequence for the consumer market: there will be companies that go bankrupt. And it will be soon: by the end of 2026. slap. According to the boss of the controller company, this situation will put many consumer brands on the ropes, pushing some to disaster before the end of the year. When we talk about “consumer devices”, we refer to mobile phonestablets, consoles and computersbut also cars and of other devices with RAM and flash memories, such as televisions and even routers. Because it’s not that we can’t buy a couple of RAM pills, it’s that gigantic companies like Apple or Lenovo are already facing the problems involved in not having RAM. Memory production is dominated by just three companies and, although there are others such as Intel, tesla and the Chinese wanting to get their nails in the matterSamsung, Micron and SK Hynix are still the only ones capable of supplying the demands of the one that cuts the cod: NVIDIAas well as from Meta, Google or Microsoft. All production is focusing on creating memory for AI, and that means that Corsair, Dell, HP… but also Xiaomi, Vivo, OPPO, Sony or Nintendo They cannot buy RAM or they have to do so at higher prices. Consequence? That if they buy at a higher price, they must also sell the product at a higher price. And they may make devices that users are not willing to buy if they are more expensive either by price or by a less memory than that of previous generations. Unprecedented. There were already estimates that certain mobile companies were being more cautious with their shipment estimates for this year, but the CEO of Phison give a figure: between 200 and 250 million fewer mobile phones. It also targets the aforementioned PC industries (not those that we can assemble in parts, but to those pre-assembled by the companies) and to that of televisions. If all televisions are already ‘smart’, they need components that have a price through the roof. The executive is not the only interested party that has sent a pessimistic message about the situation. In statements to BloombergMicron’s executive vice president already pointed out that the current shortage is unprecedented, ridiculing even the previous components crisis that we live in 2020. In fact, something that is also unprecedented is that RAM manufacturers request payments up to three years in advance. Big Tech optimism. While users cannot buy components and consumer-focused companies are beginning to see sea level rise, Big Tech continues investing exorbitant amounts. There is not a day that we do not have news about billion-dollar investments in some data center or agreements between the main protagonist companies. And the most curious thing about that is that a lot is being invested in something that does not yet exist. Goal, for example, ends to buy graphics cards from NVIDIA for a data center not yet built. AND NVIDIA depends on Samsung I sent him a memory that he still doesn’t have. But the wheel keeps turning and, as one of the SMIC bosses commentedthe big feature of China, “no one has really thought about what exactly those data centers will do, but companies would love to build the entire capacity of the next 10 years in just one or two years.” We’ll see who gets ahead. Image | Andrey Matveev In Xataka | There was only one way to lower the price of RAM: Samsung and SK Hynix have flatly refused

The Government of Mexico says that the measles crisis is a “global problem.” The data says it is a self-inflicted crisis

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Mexico is going through a very critical moment as far as measles is concerned, since infections they don’t stop increasing in different parts of the country and even with several dozen dead for the infection. And here the question we can ask ourselves is quite obvious: How is it possible that this has happened with a disease that was practically under control? The statements. In the offices of the Ministry of Health of Mexico they have found a rhetorical umbrella for the storm that is falling on them, pointing to the “global context”. According to the official narrative, the rebound in measles that the country is experiencing is simply the local echo of a trend that also you are living in other countriesso it may serve as political consolation not to be the only country to go through this crisis. The problem with this defense is that, when one stops looking at the world map and zooms in on the national data for each country, the excuse falls apart. All this because Mexico is not suffering from measles “like everyone else” but is suffering it with an intensity and lethality that shows structural cracks in its own public health system. Measles is here. To understand the defense of the Mexican Government, we must first grant them the part they are right. Measles, a disease from which many they had forgotten due to their high controlhas had a revival unpleasant in recent years. To give us an idea, the WHO itself registered more than 552,000 cases suspected in 179 countries during 2025, which was accompanied by vaccination coverage that was declining globally while the world looked almost exclusively at COVID-19. In this way, it is a fact that the virus is circulating and, in American countries, the Pan American Health Organization has already warned of a large increase in measles cases between 2024 and 2025 in different regions. The Mexican exception. However, hiding behind the global trend to explain what is happening on Mexican soil is cheating the solitary. The key in this case is in the figures for the month of February, which paint a quite disproportionate scenario compared to its neighbors. To give us an idea, Mexico accumulates more than 9,400 cases confirmed from the end of 2025 to mid-2026. And to put it in context, in all of 2025 America added 14,891 cases, so Mexico is not just another statistic, but is the epicenter of the problem in the hemisphere, concentrating a large part of the infections in North America. His mortality. While in other countries the different outbreaks are being contained, in Mexico the number of deaths is counted in the dozens. Right now in Mexico there are 29 deaths in seven states, and the most worrying data comes from Chihuahua, which accumulates 21 of these deaths, followed by a worrying situation in Mexico City with two deaths and Jalisco, which accounts for 60% of the cases in 2026. The extra problem is that they are not isolated outbreaks, but rather there is active transmission in 32 states and 335 municipalities, so the virus moves with a freedom that suggests that the epidemiological firewalls have failed. The reasons. If the virus is the same for everyone, why does Mexico take the brunt of it? The answer is not abroad, but in the internal management of recent years. The local press here points to a dismantling of the surveillance systems and also to a collapse in the routine vaccination system that has affected children from 1 to 4 years old. Right now the health authorities boast of having administered millions of doses of vaccine against measles, rubella or mumps, but the reality on the street is different. In this case, coverage in rural areas has fallen well below the 95% necessary for herd immunity and high population mobility, anti-vaccine misinformation and a late response that prioritized the political narrative over health containment also play a role. Images | Jezael Melgoza In Xataka | The myth of 37º: it is increasingly clear to us that there is no “normal” body temperature

RAM is in an “unprecedented” crisis. So much so that even Tesla is considering opening its own memory factory

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Neither technological advances nor a revolution in devices: crises are what is defining the last years of the sector. He veto Huaweithe semiconductor crisis of 2020 and now, the RAM memory crisis. The difference between this crisis and the previous one is that, although the 2020 crisis was caused by a perfect storm, the RAM memory crisis is being caused by excessive interest in data centers and AI. And it is taking all sectors ahead. That there is no RAM memory for consumers is a symptom, but it implies something much bigger: although the main producers are investing millions to increase your RAM productionit is not memory for consumption, but for GPUs and data center systems. Only a few companies dominate the production of these chips, and if they cannot produce them, they do not produce the memory chips for SSDs –raising the price-. They dedicate all production to meeting the demands of AI. And, as we read in FortuneElon Musk, one of the owners of some of the largest data centers on the planethas shown that there are two ways to face this crisis: hitting the wall or taking action. And the translation is that Tesla is considering building its own RAM factory. The problem is that it is easier said than done. Tesla and Intel interested in biting the RAM biggies In recent weeks, some of the world’s leading companies have presented results and RAM has been the central topic. PlayStation, for example, has assured that they are very aware of their ability to continue manufacturing PS5 with the goal of not going upagain, the price. And NVIDIA has been stating for days that it needs TSMC – its main chip supplier – and Samsung – who provides them with new generation HBM4 memory – get the batteries. Meanwhile, the outlook is not good. own NVIDIA aims for seven or eight years of construction no brake on data centers. Intel assures that The crisis will extend beyond 2028 and Micron, one of the big three in DRAM memory, has cataloged the market bottleneck as “unprecedented.” In this technological tsunami, and during Tesla’s results presentation at the end of January, Elon Musk pointed out that the company could need to build your own memory manufacturing plant. The objective is the one that all companies have: ensure supply. Going from scratch to manufacturing RAM memory is easier said than done, however, here Tesla has an advantage: they are not new to chip manufacturing. Although they abandoned the project for a few months, at the beginning of this year Musk himself stated that They came back with their own chip for your data centers. Additionally, there is the fact that they are a company with enough muscle to create a clean chip manufacturing room next to some of its existing plants. Intel is another one looking to become one of the important voices in the RAM conversation. Together with the Japanese giant SoftBank, they are developing an evolution of stacked DRAM memory that have been baptized as ‘ZAM’ and that seeks to break the HBM memory monopoly of Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix. Now, things in the palace are going slowly, and if Intel (which is already in it) It will take between three and four years to have commercial productsTesla’s ambition may go into the next decade. Let’s hope we don’t continue in this crisis by then, but if more “players” are interested in producing RAM, it would mean that, in the event of subsequent crises, there will not be a few that dominate the sector, producing a bottleneck like the one we are experiencing. Domino effect of the AMR crisis and China taking action Because this is not just about RAM being more expensive for users: it goes much further. If companies do not have the capacity to satisfy the demand for AI, they pour all their manufacturing muscle into a single task, neglecting the others. This explains the rise in the price of SSDs, but also of other products that should not have a leading role in this conversation: hard drives or HDDs. It is a brutal domino effect because, as we say, it goes beyond the modules being more expensive: RAM is more expensive for companies and that implies mobile phones or more expensive or with less RAMconsoles that increase in price (like what is happening posing for nintendo switch 2), machines that are late and they will be more expensive (like the Steam Machine), car problems and even impacting the routers. And in this scenario, in which companies like Intel or Tesla are considering taking a bite out of the RAM sector, we have some Chinese companies that had no role in the conversation. positioning itself as an option to alleviate demand. We told it a few days ago: there were reports indicating that PC brands such as Asus, Dell or HP were considering purchasing memory from Chinese manufacturers such as CXMT. Their modules are not as advanced as those of Samsung, for example, and they do not have the production capacity of South Korean companies, but… they produce. And in lean times, that’s better than selling laptops without RAM. Anyway, as we have said on occasion, there are still more companies joining the production of RAM when the crisis has already had a full impact, but the goal is not to create more RAM for ourselvesbut for your data centers. It’s time to entrust ourselves to the most sacred thing: that our PC doesn’t break and we need to update. Images | Gage Skidmore, Intel In Xataka | The US has a problem with its AI data centers: more and more states are opposed to building them

In the midst of the RAM crisis, Intel counterattacks with ZAM. It is the chip to break South Korean hegemony

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Few would have guessed not so many years ago the Intel transformation. The company that will dominate consumer processors and servers for generations has been through a real ordeal through the desert under the rule of AMD. However, they have returned for their rights and not only –rescue through– have positioned themselves to be the great American foundry, but are looking to take a bite out of the gigantic South Korean RAM memory industry thanks to its new memory: ZAM memory. And its weapon is three-dimensionality. Z for ‘zolution’. Do you remember when, in math class, you drew the first cube? The X axis is east-west. The Y axis is north-south. What the square needed to become a cube is the Z axis, the one up and down. That’s what engineers SAIMEMORYthe company resulting from the collaboration between the Japanese SoftBank and Intel, have applied traditional DRAM memory with a single objective: to assault the enormous market for high-bandwidth memory, or HBMwhich dominates data centers. Puff pastry. A few months ago we told you that the two companies They had embarked on a joint path to stand up to the dominance of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron in the creation of high-performance memory. lHBM memory is preferred for data centers because it has a beastly bandwidth that allows a greater number of simultaneous operations. It’s like a huge highway. However, it has limitations: it is expensive to produce, requires a lot of energy, and gets hot enough to require expensive dissipation systems. Conventional DRAM memory was not an alternative, but Intel and SoftBank began to ‘play around’ with stacked DRAM memory. It is like a puff of RAM memory (simplifying things a lot), whose main limitation came when connecting each of those thin layers of memory so that the final product had the same capabilities as that highway that is HBM memory. ZAM. After a few months of research, a few days ago at the Intel Connection in Japan, SAIMEMORY and Intel presented the ZAM prototype. According to the companiesa ZAM module can have a capacity of up to 512 GB, it is easy to produce because it consists of designing vertically stacked chips and most importantly: it can reduce energy consumption by 40% to 50% compared to conventional HBMs. If HBMs are expensive and take time to produce, ZAMs are cheaper, can be the solution to alleviate restrictions in the supply chain and, in addition, would lower the energy consumption of data centers (which is one of the problems they have), and are also easier to cool. At the moment, the company’s research points to a theoretical limit of 20 layers, but current designs move around 16 layers, so performance may be better if this current limitation can be overcome. Real alternative. Intel’s ambition is total, since they point out that their DRAM module joining technology allows them to offer two to three times the capacity of HBM modules while being up to 60% cheaper to produce. It all seems like a plus and doesn’t seem like bad technology when established giants in HBM memory creation like Samsung are also researching how to overcome the limitations of connections in stacked DRAM memory. The prototype | Photo by PCWatch Ambition. And, almost as important as the presentation of the ZAM prototype, is the alliance itself. Intel has been away from the memory market for many years. He tried it in the 80s and, again, years later with his Optane technology -that died miserably without making the slightest gap in the market. On the other hand, SoftBank represents a Japan that had the lead in this sector in the 1980s, but was overshadowed by emerging South Korean companies. In fact, Intel’s memories were eaten by the Japanese… and the Japanese by the South Koreans. SAIMEMORY has behind it not only those sharks, but other Japanese companies such as Fujitsu, Shinko Electric Industries, PowerChip Semiconductor Manufacturing or the University of Tokyo. And if ZAM memory works on a commercial level, it will not only be good news to alleviate the memory production chains (perhaps this will also alleviate the domestic market totally destroyed for the data center needs), but will mark the birth of a new and ambitious player who seeks to break the hegemony of the trident he currently leads. We will see it, of course, in a few years, since SAIMEMORY plans complete prototypes in fiscal year 2027 and begin commercialization in 2029. Image | Samsung, Maxence Pira In Xataka | The CEO of Nothing is clear that we do not need a high-end mobile phone every year. A mix of RAM crisis and common sense

China had never had anything to do with the RAM conversation. Until the crisis came

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The current component crisis brings back memories of Vietnam. Specifically, of the semiconductor crisis of 2020. If at that time there were no chips due to COVID, the incipient trade war between China and the United States and natural disasters, now it is the exorbitant investment in artificial intelligence the one that is leaving us without SSD and, above all, without RAM. The three major memory manufacturers (Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron) have dedicated themselves to creating chips for GPUs in data centers, so much so that Micron has exited the consumer segment for dedicate all your production to meet the demand for AI. own NVIDIA will not launch the RTX 6000 this year Because of this, and apart from PC users, there are others affected by this crisis: RAM assemblers. To the point that there are already reports that the main PC manufacturers are thinking about buying RAM from Chinese manufacturers. To CXMT, specifically. Bad for many, support for Chinese RAM? If there is no RAM, there is no RAM. The problem is that, as we say, there are many brands that sell memory ‘pills’but not all of them manufacture that component. If you buy an SSD or RAM from Samsung, they have manufactured it, but if you buy a module from Corsair, what they have done is assemble the chips that have been purchased from one of the major RAM manufacturers. And then there are the PC vendors. HP, Asus or Dell do not manufacture the key components of their computers already assembled: they buy them from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and RAM and SSD manufacturers. That is to say: this shortage of components that affects us as users, It is also impacting the main PC manufacturers. The perfect example is the Steam Machinewhich seemed like it would arrive at an attractive price and not only has it been delayed, but there are already signs that this crisis will cause it to be much more expensive than it should. Also the case of manufacturers selling PC… without memory. A few weeks ago we told you that, in such a situation, Asus was considering looking at the Chinese RAM industrybut now there are more reports pointing in that direction. Nikkei Asia point that Asus, Acer, Dell and HP are evaluating sourcing memory chips from China. It would be the first time, and one of the options is CXMT (which has ‘messes‘of course industrial espionage to Samsung). With Samsung turning to HBM memory and SK Hynix pointing out that its capacity is exhausted by 2026, the price of RAM has skyrocketed between 90 and 95% this first quarter of 2026. That’s where companies like ChangXin Memory Technologies They can take a bite out of the RAM market. “There is real potential for Chinese companies to aggressively expand in memory chips and flash memory” – Tae Kim A few weeks ago they presented DDR5 chips at 8,000 MHz for desktops and LPDDR5X at 10,667 MHz for portable devices and they have already started to supply to another Chinese company: Lenovo. Aside from the Nikkei Asia report, technology analyst Tae Kim – author of the book ‘The NVIDIA Way‘- also points out that HP is analyzing Chinese suppliers for products destined for the Asian and European markets. Kim points out that, while memory chips for GPU and AI have very specific characteristics, RAM memory chips are more ‘basic’, and this crisis of the large manufacturers can mean a golden opportunity for Chinese companies to “expand aggressively in the memory chip and flash memory space.” It certainly seems like the perfect opportunity for a company like CXMT that hopes reach 300,000 units manufactured per month in 2026 and that seeks to go public to raise 4.2 billion dollars that will allow them to expand their production. And they are not the only ones, since there are other heavyweights of Chinese RAM such as Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. -YMTC- that aspires to the same as its neighbor: to bite a piece of the pie that is the international RAM market. The production of Chinese companies is quite lower to that of Samsung, for example, but with a RAM market that will not ease until 2027 according to some2028 according to Intel and to whom It has seven or eight years of aggressive expansion leftAccording to NVIDIA, it is clear that companies like YMTC or CXMT have an opportunity that they should not miss. We will see if this alleviates the market somewhat, since right now it is impossible to consider building a PC…and the one we already have better not break. Image | Blake Patterson (edited) In Xataka | The RAM crisis is so extreme that it has achieved what seemed unthinkable: Apple’s memories are “cheap”

The Government applauded Repsol’s discounts in the midst of the gasoline crisis. Competition the fine now with 20.5 million for them

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February 2022. Spain is still suffering the economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis. After two years with workers suffering ERTES, Russia invades Ukraine and a war breaks out that we continue to suffer four years later. Immediately, the economy of the entire continent is reeling. Basic products skyrocket in price and, among them, fuel enters a runaway inflationary race. One that, in turn, once again raises the prices of basic products. February 3, 2022 we counted on Xataka that gasoline was more expensive than ever. We paid 1,538 euros per liter. 24% more than the previous year. In summer we were close to two euros per liter. By then the Government had launched its action plan. After a transport strike and with France applying state aid to the purchase of gasoline, the State began to subsidize with 20 cents/liter the purchase of fuel for all drivers. The measure only proved to be a plug through which water leaked. In summer the most pessimistic voices already pointed to a price of up to three euros per liter in gasoline. The pump price, fortunately, did not reach that point. In fact, that same summer another war began. This time at the service stations. And although the price of gasoline continued to rise to the point that at the till We were paying 1.80 euros for each liter again, The big oil companies brought out all their weapons: points cards, temporary discounts, loyalty plans… Movements that hid something that the CNMC already warned about that same summer: the big oil companies were getting rich. Now, it is the same CNMC that has made a decision: to fine Repsol 20.5 million euros. Abuse of power against competitors The CNMC has confirmed a sanction of 20.5 million euros to several Repsol Group companies and punishes them with disqualification from participating in public contracts for six months on the understanding that they abused their position of power to narrow profit margins with the intention of driving competitors out of the market. Competition defends that the discounts applied during the year 2022, which at the time were applauded by the Governmentthey narrowed the profit margins in the sale of fuel to the point of preventing companies selling low-cost fuel from competing on equal terms. The CNMC alleges that “competition law requires that companies in dominance position are especially responsible for not restricting competition. They assure that after various complaints they went to the Repsol Group service stations at the end of 2022 and that at the end of 2023 They initiated the disciplinary proceedings with the information collected. In the investigation. The behavior of Moeve, then Cepsa, and BP was also analyzed. However, only Repsol has been sanctioned. From the company, they point out in Five Daysassure that they will appeal the fine while arguing that “it is the first time in the history of national and community competition law that the CNMC sanctions a company for applying discounts.” Those days of 2022 were marked by the role of the oil companies. In April, when the State began to apply the discount of 20 cents per liter of fuel, low-cost operators They threatened to strike because they understood that the money they had to put out of their own pocket (of the 20 cents/liter, five were borne by the operator) destroyed their profit margins. Later, the CNMC confirmed that the companies in charge of supplying fuel were obtaining a juicy profit with the increase in fuel prices, to the point that their profit margins had widened despite having to put money in to subsidize fuel, with record gross margins. Now, the entity in charge of ensuring competition points out that Repsol also took the opportunity to try to sweep away the competition. It will have to be Repsol that manages to demonstrate that it did not act in this way and as the CNMC defends. Photo | Repsol In Xataka | For the first time, electrified cars are outselling gasoline cars. It is the beginning of the inevitable

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