Insta360 spent more on memory chips in six months than Starman is paying for GoPro

The reason for the Times Square shop, Max Richter told the South China Morning Post, is explanation. A 360-degree camera is hard to demonstrate in a listing, and the invisible selfie stick effect that built the brand travels as a video ^[20]. The store is at 1515 Broadway, Insta360's first in the United States and its second self-operated shop outside China after Tokyo in August ^[1].

Set the two figures side by side. Insta360's six-month memory bill of $298.4m is about 4.7 percent larger than the $285m of cash GoPro shareholders will receive ^[1]. Add the roughly $92m of GoPro debt Starman Optical is retiring, and the full consideration comes to about $377m ^[2]. The six-month component bill is around 79 percent of the price of the entire company. Richter said a similar figure is unavoidable in the coming quarters, and that it is unclear when the memory crisis will ease ^[3]. Hold that rate for four quarters and the line item runs near $600m ^[3].

One company could prepay for a year of expensive memory and the other could not. Insta360 funded it and stayed in the black: half-year net profit down 94 percent, revenue up 50 percent, research spending up almost 80 percent ^[7]. GoPro cited memory price rises of 80 to 115 percent, a 26 percent revenue decline and expected covenant breaches, cut 23 percent of its staff and said it might not survive ^[8]. TNW wrote that the crunch was sorting the category by who can fund a year of inflated input costs ^[21].

There is a second axis, and it decides whether a finished camera can be sold at all. DJI was added to the FCC's covered list in December 2025 after the security audit Congress ordered was not completed by the deadline. Its new products cannot get the radio approval needed for import and sale ^[12]. Models already authorised stay on shelves ^[13]. The FCC has also proposed pulling DJI drones it previously approved, reaching by capability into thermal imaging, LiDAR and docking systems ^[14].

Anyone shipping a camera next year has to fund memory at current prices and get the radio approved. DJI holds 65 percent of handheld smart cameras by IDC's count and fails the second ^[17][12]. GoPro passed the second, failed the first, and is being sold ^[4]. Insta360 passes both for now. Richter told the Post that the company currently faces no US restrictions, and he declined to treat his rival's lockout as a windfall, saying Insta360 did not want it to happen this way and that it is not the main motivation ^[15]. The covered list has kept widening by company, by category and now by capability, and has reached foreign robots and inverters ^[16].

GoPro's exit sends it after the customers whose demand drove memory prices up. The company will stay listed on Nasdaq and reposition towards AI data centre, government, defence and aerospace markets ^[9]. Founder Nicholas Woodman described the combined business as an American imaging and optical company working on national security ^[10]. That data centre demand pulled wafer capacity away from consumer memory ^[6].

For a hardware team, the number to bring to the next planning review is how many quarters of memory you can prepay without tripping a covenant. The second is which spec line you drop when you cannot. Insta360 prepaid half a year at about $298.4m and reported profit down 94 percent ^[2][7].