technology

Despite the direness of the shortage, global memory producers have shifted their production toward building high-performance computing (HPC) equipment. The DRAM market is dominated by Samsung, as well as competitors SK Hynix and Micron. In a sign of the times, the latter announced in December that it would shut down its consumer business to meet the demand of the chip-hungry AI industry.

That came to the ire of the PC computing business, which has faced skyrocketing prices. It's not just high-bandwidth memory, which is optimal for data centers. The price of most current-generation DDR5 RAM has more than doubled; even last-gen DDR4 RAM has taken a similar trajectory. And the DRAM market has not been singular in its recent explosion in prices.

Flash storage has also become a hot-button issue. The CEO of Phison, which provides equipment for SSD drives, stressed that price increases on NAND flash would be rising by "up to 50, 75%" as hyperscalers throw elbows in the tightening market. The shares of storage makers like Western Digital and Seagate were among the best-performing equities in the U.S.'s S&P 500 index in 2025.