The shortage of memory for systems is no secret, but even this is hard to swallow. Reuters reports that major customers of SK Hynix, one of the three big memory makers, are offering to bankroll the purchase of advanced memory manufacturing equipment.

Normally, it’s up to Hynix and its two chief competitors, Samsung and Micron, to buy their own manufacturing equipment from ASML, the Dutch giant that makes all of the advanced equipment used for making chips.

But here, Reuters would have us believe that customers are so desperate for supply that they will buy the advanced lithography machinery for Hynix, and that Hynix is weighing the proposals cautiously, concerned that accepting could leave it beholden to individual buyers.

There are two types of offers being advanced, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke to Reuters. The first is some customers have proposed funding dedicated memory production lines at Hynix’s facilities, while others have offered to cover the cost of ASML EUV lithography machines.

Those lithography machines are neither small nor cheap. They are the size of a bus and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Shipping and assembly alone take months, to say nothing of the time spent manufacturing them.

Reuters cites three unnamed sources in Korea as the source of information. Given the sensitive nature of such discussions, and the Korean reputation for being tight-lipped about these things, the claim is doubtful.

A more likely scenario is that the customer would fund a part of Hynix’s current fab build-outs in return for unit volume guarantees and price concessions. That’s not unheard of. There’s also the option of prepayment, where a customer pays a lump sum up front, and future shipments are billed to that prepayment.