RAM is becoming the new ‘gold’: Here’s who is to blame and when prices will fall

The problem is that HBM is not something that can be “just transferred” to existing production. Such memory needs specific processes and capacities, and when a new factory is started to be built, it takes a long time to reach a serious volume. That’s why the industry lags behind the demand, and once the queues are created, the prices go down much slower than they went up.

IEEE Spectrum also states that big players such as Samsung, SK hynix and Micron are investing in new facilities, but a large part of the new capacity goes directly to HBM, because that’s where the profits are the highest. This means that “ordinary” DRAM for laptops, PCs and servers can remain under pressure even when the factories start to catch fire, because the priority will go to AI orders.

In practice, this can have very visible consequences. Manufacturers of computers and mobile phones may pay more for memory or find it more difficult to obtain quantities, and this then spills over into the prices of finished devices. On the other hand, data centers and AI companies have money and contracts that give them an advantage, so the market increasingly looks like a race in which consumer electronics is not in first place.

Because of all this, it is clear that quick relief is not realistic. Even with new investments, stabilization and more “normal” prices seem like a story for later, not for this year or the next. AI has opened a new phase in which memory is treated as a strategic resource, not just a component that is cheaply ordered in large quantities.