- A report releases a claim from a research firm suggesting that memory prices are poised to rise another 40-50% by the end of the first quarter.
- Another analyst firm notes that there is a “permanent reallocation” of RAM chip supply toward AI companies.
- Data centers are expected to capture more than 70% of the total supply of high-end memory chips this year.
As the AMR crisis appears to intensify every week, a new report makes clear that the results could have a bigger impact on consumers than expected, leaving a range of technologies facing price hikes in a scenario similar to the pandemic’s disruption to supply chains.
Tom’s Hardware pointed to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article that highlights how bad the RAM crisis has gotten, and even how much worse it is likely to get.
We’re told that according to Counterpoint Research, memory prices are expected to rise another 40-50% by the end of Q1 (March) 2026, with prices having already increased by 50% in the last quarter of 2025.
This is all happening because of the AI boom, with memory being sucked out of the data centers needed to drive the increasingly popular LLMs (Large Language Models) such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini, among others (such as DeepSeek and Kimi K2 in China).
The servers in these data centers need large amounts of RAM, and the heavy graphics cards that are also essential for driving the AI responses you may use every day also require video RAM (and lots of it). In short, AI is very RAM intensive, and growing AI companies are spending a lot of money to be able to continue to drive growth.
As the WSJ report explains, AI’s colossal purchasing power is crowding out other industries trying to procure memory, which could have a ripple effect across all kinds of technologies.
It’s not just the RAM in your laptop, PC or smartphone, but also consumer electronics like TVs, cars and, of course, anything with memory in it – all of which are facing potential price hikes due to AI-driven shaky memory supply. (And, it should be noted, this is also due to decisions made by memory chip makers some time ago when there was a glut of inventory and production was cut to correct that – with demand for AI causing a massive overcorrection in the other direction).
So now we’re talking about another situation like the pandemic, where the supply chain is hit hard and prices are rising (and some products are difficult or impossible to source – we can already see this happening to some extent, like with high-end GPUs).
As Avril Wu, senior vice president of research at analyst firm TrendForce, says: “I’ve been watching the memory industry for almost 20 years, and this time it’s really different. This truly is the craziest time ever. »
Another analysis firm, IDC, estimates that rising memory (and storage) prices will impact PC and phone sales by 9% and 5% respectively in 2026 (with these costs inevitably passed on to consumers).
Additionally, IDC notes that a “permanent reallocation” of supply is favoring AI companies, and this will obviously come at the expense of anything that uses memory. The prediction is that data centers (not just those for AI processing, but all such facilities) will consume more than 70% of the total supply of high-end memory chips that will be manufactured in 2026. Ouch.
Analysis: AI eats your RAM dinner
So, is there any hope we can cling to here, for us, beleaguered consumers, in the face of the RAM-eating AI juggernaut?
Well, the big memory chip makers – Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix – have put their foot to the metal to accelerate the construction of new production facilities to produce more chips. However, the problem is that these projects are longer term and won’t really impact RAM supply until 2028. Which, of course, is consistent with a lot of these predictions we’ve heard about the RAM crisis, not only for this year, but also throughout 2027.
In the meantime, creative solutions may come into play, such as reusing old memory chips. The WSJ recalls the case of Caramon, a company that recovers RAM from decommissioned servers, which saw the value of its sales almost double, from $500,000 to $900,000 per month, in the space of a few months since the memory crisis took hold.
Consumers may look to purchase used RAM on auction sites in a similar manner, or even salvage memory from an old PC at home for a new build (as a temporary stopgap).
And we could pin some hopes on the AI industry finding its own creative solutions to reduce reliance on huge chunks of RAM – see this recent development with DeepSeek.
For now, however, the AI RAM monster is very real and could be a punishing beast for consumers to face over the next couple of years.
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