Model labs start cutting out the middlemen — a 1GW direct lease here, direct DRAM buying from 2027 there; SoftBank finally puts a price on OpenAI money: 9-10%; Connect gives agents a take-rate and Amazon gives them a blockade

1. The labs start dismantling the middlemen: Anthropic in talks for a 1GW direct lease, OpenAI/Anthropic to buy DRAM straight from makers in 2027 — memory vendors face the end-demand for the first time

What happened.Two reports point at the same structural shift. The Information (exclusive): Anthropic is in talks for up to 1 gigawatt of data center capacity leased directly from Apollo-backed Stream Data Centers — the framing is "cementing control of data centers," i.e., compute without the cloud intermediary. In parallel, a DIGITIMES industry report this week (via Chosun/aju Press): OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to start purchasing memory directly from manufacturers in 2027, with "Anthropic's DRAM demand beginning to rival NVIDIA's." The groundwork is already laid: OpenAI's Stargate partnerships with Samsung/SK (expansion toward up to 900k DRAM wafer starts a month), Amodei confirming investment-and-supply agreements with Samsung/SK in July, and Anthropic's early-stage own-chip work including talks over Samsung's 2nm foundry and advanced packaging (The Information). Caveat: all of this is "talks/expected," nothing signed.

Why it matters.Phase one of generative AI ran through "NVDA GPUs + hyperscalers" as the mandatory path between memory makers and the labs that actually run the models. The two largest labs are now bypassing both layers at once — direct DC leases (supply certainty) + direct memory buying (spec and capacity lock-in) + own silicon (cost curve). For Samsung/SK hynix/MU: a new customer class — end demanders at the negotiating table directly, moving the pricing benchmark from channel prices to terminal contract prices; that is precisely the demand-side amplifier for Rosenblatt's "LTAs smooth the cycle" thesis. For NVDA and the big three clouds: from "only path" to "one of several options," a marginal loss of intermediary pricing power. It rhymes with the earlier reporting on labs hunting 20-30MW sites ("speed-to-grid" logic) — lab infrastructure spend is being internalized and made physical.

Investment implication.Transmission: direct buying lands → LTA share of memory revenue rises → ASP and capacity visibility improve → the memory valuation paradigm keeps shifting from "slope of price hikes" to "contract structure"; meanwhile lab-owned/leased capacity differentiates hyperscaler backlog quality (real demand vs resale commitments). Watch: whether MU's 9/30 call and Samsung's October results disclose any lab-direct contracts; the infrastructure-commitment language in Anthropic's IPO filing. Kill condition: 2027 direct buying fails to materialize at reported scale, or the 1GW talks collapse — then "disintermediation" downgrades to a bargaining chip.

HIGH IMPACT Confidence: MEDIUM-HIGH (The Information/DIGITIMES dual chain, but talks — not signed) Affected: 005930 KS · 000660 KS · MU US · NVDA US · MSFT US · GOOGL US · AMZN US