The Transcript Catalyst Watch：存储涨价放缓、超大规模数据中心资本趋紧与 Fed 政治风波

Welcome to Catalyst Watch at The Transcript, a report for paid subscribers that highlights investment themes from this week’s newsletter.

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1. Memory Pricing Is Moderating

Micron reported last week that its revenue grew an astounding 3.5x in FY 2026. It’s well known at this point that memory is in extreme short supply. Micron said that it has no line of sight as to when that will change.

“With robust demand trends including new upside requests from customers, we do not have line of sight to when supply and demand will return to balance...it just takes a long time for these new clean rooms that the whole industry is working on to be able to build and then qualify and then equip” - Micron (MU -0.96%↓) COO Manish Bhatia

Pricing has been the key driver of Micron’s results, so it’s worth noting that the company is expecting some moderation in price increases:

“We had indicated for the balance of the year that we would see margin expansion relative to Q1 a function of continued price increases, albeit at a more moderate pace. And we’ve said that for some time that eventually price increases would moderate.” - Micron (MU -0.96%↓) CFO Mark Murphy

Server unit volumes are only up in the high-teen percentages, and customers are trying to reduce the amount of memory they’re using amid supply and pricing constraints.

“We expect server unit growth in the high-teens percentage range in both calendar 2026 and 2027. This strong server unit growth is supported by a modestly lower rate of content growth than prior expectations, amid tight memory supply.” - Micron (MU -0.96%↓) CEO Sanjay Mehrotra

This is all extremely important because it implies that perhaps AI spending may be reaching its financial limits. Even though there is going to be a supply constraint, as far as Micron can see, there is only so much that hyperscalers are able to pay for access.

2. The Sources of Capital, Even for Hyperscalers, Are Eventually Finite

Comments from Digital Realty Trust also corroborate that capital availability may be reaching its limits. DRT mentioned that capital markets are becoming more discerning in financing data centers, especially for neo-clouds:

“Access to capital is still abundant and available, but I would say it’s becoming more discerning. And maybe even more so with where interest rates are going, but particularly from, I think, an underlying customer set, right?…it feels like there’s almost becoming like 3 tiers now. There’s the high-investment-grade customers, AA or single-A and above, you can get deals done as long as your contracts are structured appropriately. You then have kind of like lower-investment or BBB level. Some of those are getting harder, more discerning, in order to get capital against them. And then you have, call it, more neo-cloud, no ratings. I think that’s becoming much harder across -- at least from what we see across the -- from a broader landscape perspective across the globe.” - Digital Realty Trust (DLR 1.10%↑) CFO Matt

None of this means that AI spending is coming to a halt, but it does all imply that the comparative growth could be slower in 2027 than 2026. This would also coincide with a potential slowdown in frontier model development due to safety concerns.

For capital markets, slower growth is usually not well received.

3. The Political Blame Game for Higher Rates

As interest rates continue to rise, it’s noteworthy that the Trump administration appears to be directing its political fire at the FOMC in general rather than Kevin Warsh specifically. After the Fed raised rates in September, Trump himself implied that Warsh couldn’t fight a politically motivated board, and last week Kevin Hassett made a similar comment:

“The other thing about the Fed, and you know how long I’ve been close friends with Kevin Warsh…, he’s managing an unusually partisan Fed...If you go back to 1913, when chairmen, when their term is up, they leave. The same has been true for vice chairs… So why are they sticking around if not to worry about what the future Fed is going to do?” - U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett

We have chronicled for the past few months how Warsh’s policy doctrines are encouraging the yield curve to shift. If he stays out of the immediate line of fire, it gives him more cover to continue to implement policy in the spirit of his philosophy. This means that it’s likely Fed policy will stay on its current course, and interest rates with it.