With the explosive growth in AI computing power demand and the full onset of the storage industry’s “super cycle,” the prices of storage chips continue to soar, impacting the global electronics supply chain at an unprecedented rate, affecting everything from GPUs and SoCs to passive components.
A source from a storage chip manufacturer revealed to the media that there is currently a supply shortage, stating, “Even if smartphone manufacturers do not place orders, we can redirect our production capacity to server clients, who are also facing shortages and are willing to pay higher prices.”
This confidence stems from the wave of chip price increases facing the entire industry.
Recently, the global storage chip market has experienced a rare and strong price surge. Starting from the second half of 2025, global storage chip prices are set to rise comprehensively, with the increase accelerating significantly after entering the fourth quarter.
Market data shows that the price of mainstream DDR5 16Gb chips was $7.68 at the end of September, but within just one month, it surged to $15.5, marking a monthly increase of 102%; the price of DDR4 16Gb chips also rose by over 92%.
For example, Samsung’s DDR5-5600 (16GB) DRAM price skyrocketed from 69,000 Korean Won to 208,000 Korean Won within two months, nearly tripling.
Samsung also announced a price increase of 30% to 60% for server storage chip contracts, with the price of the 32GB DDR5 module soaring from $149 in September to $239, setting a record for the largest single increase.
According to Morgan Stanley, over the past six months, NAND spot prices have risen by about 50%, while DRAM spot prices have skyrocketed by 300%, far exceeding the long-term levels of storage chip prices from 2016 to 2018.
TrendForce predicts that by the fourth quarter of 2025, DRAM contract prices will increase by over 75% compared to the same period last year, potentially impacting overall machine costs by 8%-10%.
Structural Reasons for Supply-Demand Imbalance: AI Servers as the Core Driver
On the supply side, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are shifting production capacity towards high-profit products like HBM and DDR5, resulting in a 25% decrease in the supply of traditional storage products.
For instance, Samsung’s NAND wafer production target has been adjusted down to 4.72 million pieces (a 7% decrease), Kioxia to 4.69 million pieces (a 2% decrease), and SK Hynix to 1.8 million pieces (a 10% decrease).
At the same time, industry data shows that capital expenditure in the storage industry has decreased by 30% between 2023 and 2024, while the capacity expansion cycle lasts 18 to 24 months.
Analysts expect that the supply tightness may persist until 2026.
Unlike previous economic cycles, the current upturn in the storage chip market is not driven by consumer electronics but by AI servers.
The unprecedented storage demand brought about by training and inference of large AI language models has fundamentally changed the industry cycle rules.
On the demand side, the trend of “simultaneous increase in quantity and price” for storage chips in AI servers is particularly evident: a single AI server requires about 8 times the DRAM of a traditional server, and the demand for NAND Flash is 3 times that of traditional servers.
On the other hand, facing the challenge of AI model parameters reaching trillions, the data transfer speed of traditional storage chips has become a bottleneck limiting computing power, known as the “memory wall” problem.
To address this issue, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) has emerged. HBM provides several times the transfer speed of traditional memory by vertically stacking multiple DRAM chips, becoming a standard for AI chip giants like NVIDIA (NVDA) and AMD.
However, the manufacturing process of HBM is complex and costly, requiring more than three times the wafer capacity of standard DRAM, which directly squeezes the production capacity of traditional DRAM, further exacerbating market supply tightness.
This structural imbalance in supply and demand has also led to a rare phenomenon in pricing: as capacity is continuously occupied by HBM, the supply of traditional DRAM (such as DDR4) is becoming increasingly tight, with price increases even surpassing those of the more advanced DDR5, resulting in what is known as price inversion.
It is evident that the price surge of storage chips driven by AI demand is sweeping the globe and causing a chain reaction throughout the entire chip industry chain.
Chip Price Surge Spreads: From GPUs, SoCs to Passive Components
The price increase of storage chips is also rapidly affecting the entire chip and electronics product supply chain.
Among them, GPU chips have become the main force behind the price increases. Manufacturers like NVIDIA and AMD plan to raise the prices of graphics cards to cope with the rising costs of storage chips.
GDDR memory supply is tight, especially as AI servers prioritize the use of DDR5, leading to shortages of GDDR6X and GDDR7, which in turn drives up the overall price of graphics cards.
The price increase of HBM used in AI graphics cards is particularly significant, with the unit price of the HBM4 supply agreement between SK Hynix and NVIDIA in 2026 reaching $560, over 50% higher than the current price. High-end gaming graphics cards and AI acceleration cards have seen price increases of about 20%-30% in the past three months.
According to VideoCardz, AMD has planned to adjust the prices of all GPU models and has notified some partners, but the specific extent and timing are yet to be determined.
At the same time, there are reports that due to the rising costs of GDDR and other storage chips, AMD and NVIDIA may reduce or suspend some GPU production, prioritizing limited chips for high-margin products.
The market generally speculates that the consumer-oriented 50/60 series GPUs will be the first to be affected, with supply of consumer GPUs likely to be impacted.
The surge in GPU prices is not only impacting the DIY market but also affecting pre-built systems, laptops, Xbox, PlayStation, and handheld gaming consoles.
According to PCMag, the rising storage costs may lead to price increases for nearly all electronic products next year, while also triggering panic buying in some markets. As cloud computing and AI companies ramp up procurement, SSD prices have also surged significantly.
Some SoC and MCU chips have also seen price increases; these chips are widely used in smartphones, automotive electronics, and IoT devices, with the soaring prices of integrated DDR memory directly raising manufacturing costs.
For example, in automotive electronics, the cost of DDR required for L3 autonomous driving MCU chips has risen from 15% to 25%, pushing up the prices of end products; high-end SoCs integrating LPDDR5X have seen cost increases of over 30%, with some flagship models significantly raising their prices.
Passive components have also been affected. Leading Chinese company Wuxi Jiangnan (000636.SZ) has raised prices for agents and customers by 5%-30%.
Among them, inductors and magnetic beads have increased by 5%-25%, varistors and ceramic capacitors by 10%-20%, and thick film circuits by 15%-30%.
Wuxi Jiangnan stated that the price increases are mainly due to rising upstream metal raw material prices, with silver prices having risen by 50% this year, and prices of tin, copper, bismuth, cobalt, and others also rising across the board, putting significant cost pressure on some product lines.
At the same time, the demand for passive components from AI servers and new energy vehicles has surged, with a single AI server using 8 times the MLCC of a traditional server, exacerbating the supply-demand gap.
In fact, price increases or supply tightness of core materials such as wafers, substrates, photoresists, and packaging materials will also transmit to chip costs, squeezing manufacturers’ profits.
In the context of rising storage chip prices, power chips, logic chips, and other general-purpose chips have also seen price increases.
Industry insiders point out that downstream manufacturers’ advance stocking has intensified short-term tightness, while leading manufacturers are profiting from the industry’s prosperity. Although the price increases for mid- to low-end general-purpose chips are small, they have reached 10%-15%, particularly evident in the consumer electronics and industrial control sectors, forming a comprehensive expectation of price increases.