An AI-driven price surge in storage chips is sweeping through the electronics manufacturing industry, while the PCB sector, which is part of the same supply chain, presents a complex picture of “high-end shortages and low-end pressures.”
Recently, the global storage chip market has experienced a rare wave of price increases. The price of mainstream DDR5 chips surged by 102% within a month, while DDR4 saw an increase of over 92%.
This rapid increase has quickly transmitted downstream, leading to urgent inventory shortages for mobile phone manufacturers. Some manufacturers have reported DRAM inventories lasting less than three weeks and have had to adopt a strategy of “slight price increases + strategic adjustments to storage chip configurations” to cope.
The explosive rise in storage chip prices has raised concerns among many electronics manufacturing companies: will the PCB (Printed Circuit Board), a core component of the electronics industry, follow suit and see a significant price increase?
01 Storage Surge: An Industry Chain Earthquake Triggered by AI Demand
The current wave of price increases for storage chips is fierce and rapid. Since the second half of 2025, the global storage chip industry has seen a rare widespread price increase, intensifying as we enter the fourth quarter.
Taking the mainstream DDR5 16Gb chip as an example, the price at the end of September was $7.68, and just one month later, it jumped to $15.5, marking a staggering monthly increase of 102%.
The speed of this increase has been so rapid that manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron even temporarily suspended pricing. Such market conditions have been extremely rare in the past decade.
The root cause of this storage chip price surge is the “insatiable demand” driven by artificial intelligence, which is reshaping the industry landscape. Compared to ordinary servers, each AI server requires 8 times the DRAM and 3 times the NAND compared to standard servers.
In the face of the historic opportunities brought by AI, companies like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron began to cut back on traditional DRAM production with lower profit margins last year, shifting towards the production of higher-margin products like HBM and DDR5.
02 PCB Industry: A Different Supply and Demand Logic from Storage Chips
Despite the soaring prices of storage chips, the PCB industry follows a different market logic. In 2025, the Chinese PCB industry is at a critical juncture, transitioning from scale expansion to value enhancement.
According to analysis, the global PCB market is expected to reach $83.7 billion by 2025, with a year-on-year growth of 4.2%. Compared to the dramatic fluctuations in the storage chip market, the growth in the PCB industry is more stable.
The true driving force behind the PCB market comes from structural changes. In emerging fields such as AI computing power, new energy vehicles, and 5G communications, the demand for high-end PCBs is experiencing explosive growth.
The value of a single PCB for an AI server can reach 5000 yuan, which is three times that of traditional servers. Moreover, AI server PCBs typically feature a multilayer structure of 20 to 28 layers, far exceeding the 12 to 16 layers of traditional servers, with the value of a single PCB potentially rising to $8000 to $10,000.
03 High-End PCBs: Supply-Demand Gap and Growth Potential
Driven by the demand for AI computing power, there is indeed a supply-demand contradiction in the high-end PCB market. The hardware upgrades of AI servers are driving a surge in demand for high-end PCBs, while the supply side faces capacity bottlenecks.
Global shipments of AI servers have increased from 500,000 units in 2020 to 2 million units in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 45.2%, directly boosting the demand for high-layer boards and HDI boards.
According to Xie Shuqin, Executive Director of Sullivan Greater China, the current explosive growth in high-end PCB demand driven by AI computing power faces significant structural contradictions, forming a dual pattern of “high-end shortages and low-end pressures.”
Technical barriers restrict the supply of high-end PCBs. High-end products require high-precision lamination, laser drilling, and other processes, which can only be provided by a few manufacturers globally, leading to a short-term supply-demand gap for high-end products.
04 Multiple Drivers: Diverse Growth Engines Beyond AI
In addition to AI servers, the PCB industry has multiple growth engines. New energy vehicles are one of the important fields, with the electronicization rate of vehicles exceeding 65%, driving the proportion of automotive PCBs from 12% in 2020 to 20% in 2025.
Intelligent driving systems have significantly increased the PCB usage per vehicle from 0.5 square meters in traditional cars to 3 square meters, with the PCB value for L4 autonomous vehicles exceeding 2000 yuan.
The communications sector is also a significant driver of PCB growth. The global construction of 5G base stations has exceeded 5 million, boosting the demand for high-frequency and high-speed PCBs by 25%.
The construction of low-orbit satellite constellations has also generated demand for PCBs that can withstand extreme environments, with a single satellite requiring 20 square meters of PCB, opening up a new market worth approximately 5 billion yuan.
05 Corporate Response: Differentiated Competition and Value Enhancement
In response to this industry trend, PCB companies need to adopt targeted strategies. Leading companies should focus on technological breakthroughs to capture the high-end market.
Companies like Huada Empyrean and Shenzhen South Circuit have performed exceptionally well in the fields of high-speed network switches and AI server PCBs, with Huada Empyrean’s revenue from high-speed network switch-related products increasing by 161.46% year-on-year in the first half of 2025.
For small and medium-sized enterprises, differentiated competition is key. They can focus on specific scenarios or clients, such as a certain PCB company binding high-quality clients like Huawei and Gree through a “12-layer high multilayer board + 24-hour sample delivery” model.
Vertical integration is another effective strategy. Leading companies can reduce costs and enhance supply chain resilience by integrating upstream. For example, Kingboard Chemical has laid out a full industry chain from “copper foil – copper-clad laminate – PCB,” reducing costs by 12%.
06 Future Outlook: Value Transition and Green Development
Looking ahead, the Chinese PCB industry will deepen its development around three main lines. First, the trend towards high-end products is irreversible, with technology continuing to evolve towards higher density, higher speed, and more advanced packaging.
By 2025, the Chinese printed circuit board (PCB) industry is expected to maintain its dominant position in the global market, with a market size projected to reach 433.32 billion yuan (approximately $60 billion), accounting for over 50% of the global share. The core of the industry’s development has shifted from traditional scale expansion to technology-driven and value chain enhancement, with high-frequency, high-speed, high-density interconnect (HDI), and advanced packaging becoming the main growth engines.
Green development will become a core competitive advantage. Stricter environmental regulations and the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism may increase PCB export costs by 8-10%.
Intelligentization will deeply empower industrial upgrades. Technologies such as AI-assisted design, digital twins, and 3D printing will significantly shorten R&D cycles, achieve highly customized production, and improve production efficiency and yield.
For PCB companies, the key to the future lies in precisely positioning themselves in high-end markets such as AI servers, new energy vehicles, and 5G communications. In these sectors, technological barriers can support considerable product premiums.
At the same time, companies need to accelerate the promotion of intelligent transformation and green transition, not only to cope with cost pressures but also to gain sustainable competitive advantages in the global market.
In the electronics industry supply chain, different segments are experiencing different fates, and only those companies that grasp trends and position themselves accurately will gain an advantage in this round of industrial transformation.