Is storage ushering in a golden age? Behind the 90% quarterly surge in memory prices

1、 90% surge: A storm of rising memory prices sweeping the entire industry

This surge in memory prices is not a local fluctuation, but a comprehensive outbreak covering the entire category and industry chain. The magnitude and scope of the increase far exceed market expectations. Before the fourth quarter of 2025, the memory market was still in a downturn cycle, with prices hovering at low levels. However, in just one quarter, the market pattern completely reversed, staging a "from trough to peak" comeback.

Specifically, the prices of different categories of memory have shown a soaring trend. According to data from TrendForce Consulting, it was originally expected that the contract price of Conventional DRAM would increase by 55% -60% in the first quarter of 2026, but was eventually raised to 90% -95%; The contract price of NAND Flash has also been raised from a quarterly increase of 33% -38% to 55% -60%, and further upward revisions are not ruled out. Among them, server level memory has become the main force for price increases, with the 64GB RDIMM contract price soaring from $450 in the fourth quarter of 2025 to over $900 in the first quarter of 2026, and even expected to break through the $1000 mark in the second quarter. Consumer grade memory has also seen an astonishing increase, with the price of 16GB DDR4 memory modules in the Huaqiangbei market skyrocketing from 180 yuan to 420 yuan. Merchants have admitted to "one price per day" and even experienced the phenomenon of "hoarding and making profits".

The impact of the price surge has quickly spread throughout the entire industry chain. The profit level of upstream original factories has soared significantly. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the operating profit margin of DRAM has reached the 60% range, which is the first time that General DRAM's profit margin has exceeded HBM. It is expected to break through the historical peak in the first quarter of 2026. The performance of domestic module factories has achieved a "V-shaped reversal", with Jiangbolong's net profit in the third quarter of 2025 surging by 1994% year-on-year, and Baiwei Storage expected to increase by 427% -520%. The explosive growth in performance highlights the industry's heat. At the same time, downstream terminal manufacturers are under cost pressure, such as mobile phones PC、 The automotive and other industries are under pressure, with the starting price of Xiaomi 17 Ultra increasing by 500 yuan compared to the previous generation. PC manufacturers such as Lenovo and Dell are also raising prices by 500-1500 yuan to transmit the cost pressure caused by the increase in memory prices.

2、 Behind the skyrocketing: Three core logics, not accidental

The quarterly surge of 90% in memory prices may seem sudden, but it is actually the inevitable result of the resonance of three major factors: demand explosion, supply contraction, and technological iteration. Unlike previous cycles driven by consumer electronics demand, the core of this round of price hikes is structural change, with the "devouring demand" of AI computing power becoming the biggest driving force, coupled with active supply side contraction, ultimately creating this epic wave of price hikes.

3、 Core driving force: AI computing power explosion, restructuring storage demand pattern

The core logic behind this round of memory price increases is the explosive growth of the AI industry, which has completely rewritten the underlying logic of storage demand. As the "war" of big models enters a white hot stage, both model training and large-scale inference applications have put forward extreme requirements for storage bandwidth and capacity. Memory has been upgraded from a "cost item" of electronic devices to a "strategic resource" of AI infrastructure.

Data shows that the memory requirement of a single AI server is 8-10 times that of traditional servers, directly consuming 53% of the global monthly memory production capacity. The four major cloud providers in North America (Google, Meta, Microsoft, AWS) are expected to invest $600 billion in AI infrastructure by 2026. The large-scale construction of AI data centers has created a sustained and scalable demand for high-capacity and high bandwidth DRAM. Among them, HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), as a "must-have accessory" for AI accelerators, has a demand growth of over 200% year-on-year in 2025. However, its production technology barriers are extremely high, and production capacity cannot be quickly released, further exacerbating the supply and demand tension in the memory market. This AI driven demand explosion is completely different from the cyclical fluctuations in consumer electronics demand in the past, with stronger sustainability and explosive power, becoming the core engine of this round of price hikes.

4、 Supply side contraction: Original factories' abandoning low to pursue high ', capacity gap continues to widen

At the same time as the outbreak of demand, the active contraction of the supply side further amplified the pattern of supply-demand imbalance. The world's three major storage original manufacturers, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, collectively adjusted their production capacity structure in pursuit of higher gross profit, shifting 80% of their advanced production capacity to high profit HBM and DDR5, significantly reducing the production capacity of mature processes.

Specifically, Samsung has discontinued DDR4 memory and Micron announced in December 2025 that it will exit the consumer business of Innolux and focus its resources on high-end storage products. The adjustment of production capacity directly leads to the widening of the supply gap of mature process memory. TrendForce data shows that the DRAM inventory cycle has dropped to 10 weeks in 2025, below the safety threshold of 12 weeks, and some original factory inventory is only 2-4 weeks. More noteworthy is that by 2026, the production capacity of the three major original factories has been "sold out", and long-term agreements (LTAs) have become the new normal for cloud giants to lock in supply. The tight supply-demand situation is difficult to alleviate in the short term. Goldman Sachs even issued a warning in its latest report that the global memory market will experience the most severe supply shortage in the past 15 years from 2026 to 2027, with DRAM supply exceeding demand by 4.9% in 2026.

5、 Technological iteration acceleration: premium premium for high-end products, further pushing up prices

The rapid iteration of storage technology has also become an important factor driving up the price of memory. With the increasing demand for storage performance in AI servers, the penetration rate of DDR5/LPDDR5X has rapidly increased, and its 8000Mbps speed and low-power characteristics have become standard for AI servers. However, the shrinking production capacity of mature products such as DDR4 has further pushed up the overall memory price.

At the same time, the mass production progress of the new generation storage technology lags behind the demand growth. Although HBM3e high bandwidth memory has achieved mass production, its production capacity is limited; Although domestic high-end products such as Changjiang Storage 232 layer 3D NAND and Changxin Storage HBM3e have made technological breakthroughs, they still cannot fully fill the market gap. The production capacity bottleneck caused by technological barriers has led to a continuous expansion of premium space for high-end memory products, further driving up the overall price of memory.